Environmental Profile of the Manufacturing Process of Perovskite Photovoltaics: Harmonization of Life Cycle Assessment Studies

Abstract

The development of perovskite solar cell technology is steadily increasing. The extremely high photoconversion efficiency drives factor that makes these devices so attractive for photovoltaic energy production. However, the environmental impact of this technology could represent a crucial matter for industrial development, and the sustainability of perovskite solar cell is at the center of the scientific debate. The life cycle assessment studies available in the literature evaluate the environmental profile of this technology, but the outcomes vary consistently depending on the methodological choices and assumptions made by authors. In this work, we performed the harmonization of these life cycle assessment results to understand which are effectively the environmental hotspots of the perovskite solar cell fabrication. The outcomes of this analysis allowed us to outline an environmental ranking of the profiles of the several cell configurations investigated and, most importantly, to identify the material and energy flows that mostly contribute to the technology in terms of environmental impact.

Review on Life Cycle Assessment of Solar Photovoltaic Panels

“…Another work about PSC was performed by Maranghi et al [67]. The authors evaluated the environmental hotspots connected with lab scale fabrication of different PSC configurations, through the harmonization of previous LCA studies of this technology.…”

“…The differences here may relate to the use of different materials for the layers [52,60], different solar cells architectures [36], different layers deposition times and temperatures [41], different process times, and production processes [33,39,47]. Some studies have focused on different manufacturing processes for the same type of module [28,35,53,67].…”

“…For possible configurations and materials, the substitution of glass with PET showed benefits in all impact categories, while the use of steel was still a problem, especially in fossil depletion and CC (HH) categories, such as the use of platinum [60]. Regarding PSCs, the harmonization conducted by Maranghi et al [67] showed that materials had an important role on environmental categories (mainly HTP and FAEP) and CED. In particular, the use of gold (and other metals as silver and Pt) as back contact was the main hotspot, followed by conductive solar glass and electrolyte (mainly TiO 2 and TNT).…”

Review of Emergy Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment: Coupling Development Perspective

“…Now it is the standard procedure for studying the environmental performance of production processes. LCA can not only accurately analyze the environmental loading of its entire life cycle for specific products, but can also enable the horizontal comparison of different products to provide decision-making advice [42]. The evaluation model also has high flexibility to handle more complex and multi-scenario evaluation targets.…”

Life Cycle Analysis of a Geothermal Power Plant: Comparison of the Environmental Performance with Other Renewable Energy Systems

“…Several LCA studies are available on solar PV energy conversion systems [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]; in general, the results indicate that a significant impact is coming from the manufacture of the PV modules, with the current silicon technology performing definitely better than CdTe, notwithstanding substantial advantages for thin-film manufacturing [33]. A significant fraction contribution to the overall ecoprofile (20-30%) comes from the structural materials and glazing.…”