Browsing by Subject "Life cycle assessment"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Open Access
    Assessing the carbon footprint of photovoltaic modules through the EU Ecodesign Directive
    (2023-04-19) Polverini, D.; Espinosa Martinez, M. D. L. N.; Eynard, U.; Leccisi, E.; Ardente, F.; Mathieux, F.; Física
    As announced in the European Green Deal, it is critical to decarbonise the European Union energy system in order to reach climate objectives by 2030 and 2050. According to the REPowerEU plan, photovoltaics (PV) is expected to play a major role in this. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that newly installed PV modules in the EU are affordable and competitive on the one hand and environmentally friendly on the other. Bearing in mind that the environmental hotspots for PV modules mainly occur during the manufacturing phase, the aim of the paper is to develop a fully-fledged and adapted methodology for calculating the carbon footprint of PV modules, with particular regard to the manufacturing and shipping phases, following a cradle-to-gate approach based on the Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules for PV modules. The implications of requirements for the carbon footprint of PV modules, under the existing legal framework of the Ecodesign Directive, are also discussed.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Restricted
    Life cycle assessment of ITO-free flexible polymer solar cells prepared by roll-to-roll coating and printing
    (Elsevier, ) Espinosa, Nieves; García-Valverde, Rafael; Urbina, Antonio; Lenzmann, Frank; Manceau, Matthieu; Angmo, Dechan; Krebs, Frederik C; Física
    Indium is a scarce and expensive material that has been identified as a bottleneck for future organic electronics deployment in large scale. Indium is the main constituent of Indium Tin Oxide (ITO), which is the most successful transparent electrode in organic photovoltaics (OPV) so far. A new process, termed Hiflex, allows for manufacture of flexible OPV modules where the ITO electrode has been replaced by a sputtered Al/Cr electrode in an inverted device architecture with front illumination. This work presents a life cycle assessment of the Hiflex process, in order to compare the environmental impact of avoiding ITO as electrode. The new ITO-free process reduces some of the processing steps, leading to important reductions of the energy input during OPV module manufacturing in comparison to ITO-based modules. The environmental analysis reveals an Energy Pay-Back time (EPBT) of 10 years due to the high-energy consumption of Al/Cr roll-to-roll sputtering and to the relatively low efficiency of the Hiflex OPV modules (E1%). An optimization of the active area fraction could easily reduce the EPBT to E5 years. A further enhancement of the efficiency to 5% would give rise to a promising EPBT of only 1 year. Our work highlights that vacuum processing steps should be avoided.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Publication
    Restricted
    Solution and vapour deposited lead perovskite solar cells: Ecotoxicity from a life cycle assessment perspective
    (Elsevier, 2015) Espinosa, Nieves; Serrano-Luján, Lucía; Urbina, Antonio; Krebs, Frederik C.; Física
    We present a life cycle analysis (LCA) and an environmental impact analysis (EIA) of lead based perovskite solar cells prepared according to the two most successfully reported literature methods that comprise either vapour phase deposition or solution phase deposition. We have developed the inventory for all the components employed for the two different device architectures that resemble respectively a traditional dye sensitised solar cell (DSSC) and an inverted polymer solar cell (OPV). We analyse the impacts from generation of 1 kWh of electricity and assume a lifetime of 1 year in the analysis and further present a sensitivity analysis with the operational lifetime as a basis. We find that the major impact comes from the preparation of the perovskite absorber layer due to the electrical energy required in the manufacture and also make the striking observation that the impact of toxic lead(II)halides is very limited compared to methylammoniumhalides employed. This applies during the raw materials extraction, synthesis of the starting materials and manufacture of the perovskite solar cells and from these points of view the lead based perovskite solar cells do not pose extra concerns when compared to contending solar cell technologies in the cradle-to-gate scenario considered here. The environmental impact of the perovskite solar cells in the operational phase and the decommissioning phase representing a cradle-to-grave analysis is not currently possible and will have to await large scale outdoor demonstration where emission to the environment during the operation and decommissioning phase can be measured. The main conclusion is that in the cradle-to-gate analysis there are no compelling reasons to dismiss lead based perovskites as a solar cell technology.