The real limitations to producing monocrystalline solar panels are the embodied energy. This is still 90% true for alternative polycrystalline or rare earth solar cells, but I choose to discuss the premium PV cells I use.
Growing high purity silicon rods from a vat of molten silicon in an electric blast furnace:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocrystalline_silicon...with tiny amounts of "dopant" substances such as Boron or Gallium.
Then you slice the rod into wafers with a precision diamond band-saw and polish those to a mirror finish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics)...using more electrical energy, and high tech, high precision machine tools.
Then you fabricate the wafer into a solar cell (infuse a second "dopant" into the surface in yet another high temperature electric furnace to make a "semiconductor junction") and print a thin set of wiring on the surface (aluminum deposition in a vacuum, nothing exotic)(but it uses a lot more power):
...using still more electricity. Then you square off the wafer by cutting the edges straight, to pack more wafers in a panel:
Then you package those solar cells into a panel made from aluminum (a common metal, that one makes in an electric arc furnace, using lots and lots of electricity). The clear film over the top is a plastic film made from petroleum. The wires are the (somewhat) rare metal copper and are insulated with vinyl made from more petroleum.
Then you mount these panels on your roof, using more aluminum for mounting rails, plus steel screws and clips, and wire it to inverters which are complex electronic assemblies using integrated circuits and semiconductors fabricated with more monocrystalline silicon and more dopants and then housed in a heavy wall aluminum or plastic chassis. The fiberglass circuit boards are made from glass fibers from an electric blast furnace, and resins from petroleum, and wiring/printed wiring made from more copper. The big blue capacitors are made from aluminum foil and "electrolytic" chemicals made from petroleum.
If you don't have a power grid to store excess energy, you use batteries:
Get the idea? Manufacturing solar cells requires lots and lots of concentrated electricity for electric arc furnaces, then more electricity plus petroleum to fabricate solar cells, inverters, mounting systems, and wiring.
====> Nobody makes solar panels with solar electricity, everybody uses fossil fuels. Electricity made with solar panels is about 12X as expensive as FF's, for reasons discussed above, so it's not economical to make more solar panels with solar electricity, because it would cost 12X as much, and the embodied energy would never reach the break-even point with expensive solar power. So we simply will STOP MAKING SOLAR PANELS after the cheap oil is gone, because we HAVE NO CHOICE in the matter, we can't afford to make solar panels with solar energy. We might be able to make solar panels with nuclear energy and alternative plastics made from pulpwood, but that won't work because we are SCARED OF NUCLEAR POWER.
So get your high efficiency solar panels today, while they are still available. They will bridge our power-intensive civilization into a hollow remnant where we have enough power to run the internet and light our homes and heat/cool them if you are rich or at least upper Middle Class. The riff-raff (defined as those who believed that currency or even gold was worth something in the Long Emergency) (plus those that trusted "the gov'ment" to care for them) shiver in the dark, no internet, no HDTV. They roam the abandoned cities and towns in search of fuels and wood to burn for heat. Unguarded trees disappear from forests and unguarded woodlots and residential lands and public parks within two years, then wood is more precious and harder to get than oil or gas, as happened recently in Greece. Food and Drink is the new currency.
The solar panels last 25-30 years, by which time we either move into space (my favored plan) or we invent cheap and clean hydrogen fusion and have cheap electricity again (hold your breath for that one) or we enter the die-off phase, bash each other with clubs, and hold a cannibal feast (the most likely result).
The story is basically the same for polycrystalline PV panels or thin film PV panels - we can't afford the embodied energy to make them or to mine and transport rare earths for thin films. The alternative PV cells are slightly cheaper to make but also make less electricity - the numbers are almost identical to the expensive mono silicon case. The solar thermal systems used for space heating are lower tech than PV but they still require materials that must be mined, refined, and fabricated using petroleum fuels.
Wind turbines are made with fiberglass or composites (energy intensive materials) plus steel and aluminum and copper that require fossil fuels and lots of electricity to make or mine or transport. There really are ZERO renewable energy sources that do not require cheap fossil fuels to mine/manufacture/transport/install.
All the "Green Dreams" are like that. Civilization ends when we run out of cheap fossil energy. More than likely - almost a certainty - the nasty 7+ billion humans have resource wars, maybe even nuclear wars. But somewhere along the way, the damaged ecology crashes, and food production stops. Or just maybe somebody presses the nuclear button and the world ends in two hours.
I find that I don't really give a damn. I am 63, I have the means to buy a nice house with no debt, cover it with solar panels, and keep my electricity going longer than I am likely to live, while I grumble about the inconvenience of raising chickens and vegetables, and canning food. But if you are 50 years or younger, you are well and truly screwed. Better figure on squalid and hungry savagery for the latter part of your life, and then you become dinner for somebody bigger and stronger, or the prey of somebody who saved ammunition for 30 years before he found it necessary to shoot your scavenging butt.
Nobody gets off the planet alive after the crash. Nobody survives the crash. The Earth heals and produces a new dominant species in a few million years.