ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECOLOGICAL LIFE CYCLE INVENTORIES OF PRESENT AND FUTURE PVSYSTEMS IN EUROPE FOR SUSTAINABILITY POLICIES

摘要

The current use of Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) for the calculation of external costs and energy systemmodelling and planning is limited by two main factors: 1) lack of harmonisation and transparency in themethodology used in LCA studies. 2) lack of transparent and updated and database on recent and emerging PVtechnologies (and other renewables and distributed generation technologies). These issues have been addressed and overcome by the recent EU research project ECLIPSE. With respect to photovoltaic (PV) systems, four main PVtechnologies (mc-Si, sc-Si, thin film a-Si, CIS) with different applications (ground-mounted power plants, retrofit and integrated building integrated systems) and derived configurations were analyzed, for a total of 47 system configurations. Each main technology is described in a report, which presents results in detailed and transparent manner, highlighting the crucial parameters which influence LCI results. The latter confirm the low life cycle emissions level and the very high value of PV systems towards sustainable energy systems for the future.