Mike Gering, CEO of the start-up Global Solar, picks his way along his factory floor, tracing the convoluted path that his thin-film solar panels follow from birth to shipping truck. The raw materials the workers carry are ultra-thin sheets of flexible plastic, which are then coated with a series of chemicals–indium, gallium, diselenide–that allows the module to turn sunlight into electricity.¹

¹Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine.

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