Evaluating the Environmental Benefit of Residential Photovoltaic Modules Early Retirement in California

An Updated Life Cycle Assessment of Utility-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Systems Installed in the United States

“…For the Kansas mid-case benchmark, the more common "average annual emissions" CPBT method produces a carbon payback time of 7 years, which is more than 3 times the value we estimate using the graphical method. While CPBT is not commonly assessed in PV LCA literature, most report within a range of 2-5 years, including for high-irradiance U.S. installation locations such as Phoenix (Kothari and Anctil 2022;Grant and Hicks 2020;Wang et al 2020).…”