Cellura Maurizio, Luu Le Quyen, Guarino Francesco, Longo Sonia
Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze Ed.9, 90128 Palermo, Italy.
Sci Total Environ. 2024 Jan 15;908:168019. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.168019. Epub 2023 Oct 23.
The development of solar technologies requires increased efficiency in converting solar radiation to energy, as well as innovative materials and structure to go beyond the conventional power conversion ratio. In line with these innovations, there are concerns about greenhouse gas emissions of the solar cells, materials for the solar technologies and other relevant environmental impacts of the manufacturing processes. This review is conducted on life cycle assessments of solar cells, considering the climate change and natural resource shortage context. It is identified that the majority of existing life cycle assessments on solar cells take into account four typical environmental impacts: energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, material depletion, and toxicity. Though the diverse methodological aspects make it difficult to directly compare these environmental impacts among various types of solar cells, the obtained results hinder that emerging solar cells such as perovskite solar cells or tandem solar cells are likely to have better environmental profiles than conventional silicon based and thin film solar cells, in terms of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and material consumption. However, the emerging solar cells may utilize toxic materials in which their eco-toxicity and human toxicity should be further considered during the design of the technologies. Moreover, it is identified that the energy and environmental hotspot lies in the manufacturing process, regardless of impact indicators and types of solar cells.
太阳能技术的发展需要提高将太阳辐射转化为能量的效率，以及超越传统功率转换率的创新材料和结构。随着这些创新的出现，人们对太阳能电池的温室气体排放、太阳能技术所用材料以及制造过程中的其他相关环境影响表示担忧。本综述在气候变化和自然资源短缺的背景下，对太阳能电池的生命周期评估进行了研究。研究发现，现有的大多数太阳能电池生命周期评估考虑了四种典型的环境影响：能源消耗、温室气体排放、材料消耗和毒性。尽管方法的多样性使得难以直接比较不同类型太阳能电池的这些环境影响，但所得结果表明，就能源消耗、温室气体排放和材料消耗而言，新兴的太阳能电池，如钙钛矿太阳能电池或串联太阳能电池，可能比传统的硅基和薄膜太阳能电池具有更好的环境效益。然而，新兴的太阳能电池可能会使用有毒材料，在技术设计过程中应进一步考虑其生态毒性和对人体的毒性。此外，研究发现，无论影响指标和太阳能电池类型如何，能源和环境热点都集中在制造过程中。
