Building-Integrated Photovoltaic/Thermal (BIPVT): LCA of a façade-integrated prototype and issues about human health, ecosystems, resources

Lamnatou, Chr.; Smyth, Mervyn; Chemisana, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.12.461

Cited by 33 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…Intended for calculating environmental impacts of the production of such systems, the life cycle assessment (LCA) (International Organization for Standardization 2006) is the leading and most extensive methodology (European Commission 2003). The environmental burdens of some elements of these systems described herein have been extensively assessed, such as the manufacturing of PV panels in countries such as China, Germany and Spain (Sumper et al 2011;Gerbinet et al 2014;Yue et al 2014;Fu et al 2015;Hong et al 2016;Xu et al 2018;Lamnatou et al 2019). Nonetheless, few studies have focused their interests only on the growing media used for soilless culture systems (Verhagen and Boon 2008;Warwick HRI 2009;Quantis 2012;Stucki et al 2019;Vinci and Rapa 2019) because they are usually not assessed stand-alone and without relating them to plant management practices (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental and social life cycle assessment of growing media for urban rooftop farming

Toboso‐Chavero

Madrid‐López

Villalba

et al. 2021

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose New environmental strategies are emerging for cities to become more self-sufficient, such as hydroponic crop production. The implementation of such systems requires materials that usually originate in countries with low labour costs and other legal regulations. To what extent could these strategies be shifting problems across the globe? To answer this question, we performed a comprehensive environmental and social assessment of the various extended soilless systems used to grow vegetables on urban roofs. Methods Three different growing media constituents were chosen for this study: perlite, peat and coir; which are produced in three countries, Turkey, Germany and the Philippines, respectively, and are imported to Spain. By using a life cycle assessment, we evaluated the environmental performances of the production and transport of these growing media. Additionally, we performed a social life cycle assessment at different levels. First, we used the Social Hotspots Database to analyse the constituents in aggregated sectors. Second, we performed a social assessment at the country and sector levels, and finally, we evaluated primary company data for the social assessment of the constituents through questionnaires given to businesses. Results and discussion The coir-based growing medium exerted the lowest environmental burden in 5 out of 8 impact categories because it is a by-product from coconut trees. In contrast, perlite obtained the highest environmental impacts, with impacts 44 to 99.9% higher than those of peat and coir, except in the land use. Perlite is a material extracted from open-pit mines that requires high energy consumption and a long road trip. Regarding the social assessment, peat demonstrated the best performance on all the social assessment levels. In contrast, coir showed the worst scores in the Social Hotspots Database and for the impact categories of community infrastructure and human rights, whereas perlite displayed the lowest performance in health and safety. Nevertheless, coir and perlite evidenced much better scores than peat in the impact subcategory of the contribution to economic development. Conclusions This study contributes to a first comparison of three imported growing media constituents for urban rooftop farming from environmental and social perspectives to choose the most suitable option. Peat appears to be the best alternative from a social perspective. However, from an environmental standpoint, peat represents a growing medium whose availability is aiming to disappear in Germany to preserve peatlands. Therefore, we identify a new market niche for the development of local growing media for future rooftop farming in cities.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental and social life cycle assessment of growing media for urban rooftop farming

Toboso‐Chavero

Madrid‐López

Villalba

et al. 2021

Int J Life Cycle Assess

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Other studies focus on hybrid Photovoltaic/Thermal solar systems (PV/T) for buildings with LCA and / or energy metrics analysis (Kamthania & Tiwari, 2014; Lamnatou et al., 2019; Lamnatou et al., 2019; Souliotis et al., 2018). As discussed in a review by Lamnatou and Chemisana (2017), there is a gap in the literature regarding LCA for an environmental profile of integrated PV.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Focusing on building-integrated PV/T, Lamnatou and Chemisana (2017) state that investigations which do exist present CO 2 emissions and energy pay-back time. In more recent work, Lamnatou et al (2019) present an LCA of a façade-integrated PV/T prototype, highlighting that the largest fraction of a module's impact was from PV cells, especially regarding eco-toxicity and human toxicity-non-cancer (based on primary materials). Other studies of semi-transparent hybrid building integrated PV/T exist, such as Kamthania and Tiwari (2014) which focuses on energy metrics and carbon credits for options of a hybrid PV/T double pass façade across different weather conditions of Srinagar.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of an ecological living module equipped with conventional rooftop or integrated concentrating photovoltaics

Raugei

Keena

Novelli

et al. 2021

J of Industrial Ecology

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Climate change is disrupting our environment and business‐as‐usual practices will fail to reverse its impact. This paper focuses on the impact of the building sector and, in particular, it questions the energy and environmental benefits of advanced integrated and more conventional building‐applied photovoltaic (PV) systems, compared to a traditional municipality utility supply. A demonstration project named the ecological living module (ELM) is used to create a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of the adoption of these PV systems across three different climatic locations, namely New York City, London, and Nairobi. Findings show that, over the entire life cycle, the solar systems do better than the grid mix in reducing the building's dependence on nonrenewable resources. Unsurprisingly, in comparative terms, these systems do substantially better if the local grid mix is characterized by a predominantly nonrenewable energy profile. When comparing the two solar systems, the environmental impacts of the solar cells are negligible in the advanced system, whereas its structural components result in it being less environmentally friendly than the conventional solar PV. This highlights the possibility of future design iterations of these components to rethink their material ecology in terms of their life cycle—materiality, sourcing, and manufacturing, and so forth. The implications of this work suggest questioning, on a case‐by‐case basis, when and in what contexts integrated solar energy building systems are most plausible. This work also questions the scale at which grid scale distribution should occur.

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“…However, the PVTAC has higher LCCE as compared to the water-based PVTC. Recently, Lamnatou et al [30] carried out an LCA of the building-integrated PVTC system at Ulster University, UK.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy metrics assessment of a photovoltaic thermal air collector (PVTAC): a comparison between flat and wavy collector

Jha

Mondol

Das

et al. 2020

Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmenta

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In this paper, the performances of two different configurations of the PVT air collector (PVTAC) were studied and compared with respect to three energy matrices: energy payback time, electricity production factor and life cycle conversion efficiency.Geometrically, both configurations are similar except one equipped with a flat plate collector (PVTACF) and other with a wavy plate collector (PVTACW). An experimental investigation was performed for both the models, located at Silchar (Latitude: 24.8333° N and Longitude: 92.7789° E) over a period of one year (May 2017 to April 2018). Initially, airflow velocity was varied between 1-3 m/s and ideal airflow velocity (2.5 m/s) was identified. The yearly energetic and exergetic performance was studied and presented. The overall annual energy and exergy of the PVTACW were achieved by 8.2 % and 2.3 % higher than the PVTACF. The energy payback time, electricity production factor, and life cycle conversion efficiency of the PVTACW were also achieved better than the PVTACF. The study provides useful information on the energetic performance and environmental impact of the PVTAC system under North-East Indian climatic conditions.

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Building-Integrated Photovoltaic/Thermal (BIPVT): LCA of a façade-integrated prototype and issues about human health, ecosystems, resources

Cited by 33 publications

References 74 publications

Environmental and social life cycle assessment of growing media for urban rooftop farming

Environmental and social life cycle assessment of growing media for urban rooftop farming

Life cycle assessment of an ecological living module equipped with conventional rooftop or integrated concentrating photovoltaics

Energy metrics assessment of a photovoltaic thermal air collector (PVTAC): a comparison between flat and wavy collector

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