7. Impacts of Solar Electricity

The life cycle assessment of photovoltaic technologies includes the important step of impact assessment of all the contributions of the life cycle inventory (materials or energy embedded in the modules and required for the manufacturing processes). Depending on the impact assessment methodology, different categories can be analysed, the focus is on commercial technologies comprising more than 99% of current market (crystalline silicon and thin film) that are analysed in detail with the same methodology (ReCiPe) in fifteen categories and more broadly compared with other energy technologies. Despite crystalline silicon solar cells being the dominant technology with more than 90% of market share, either already commercial thin film or emerging technologies may provide the same electricity (considered as a functional unit of life cycle assessment) with lower environmental impacts. Size dependant impacts are becoming important and creating certain social alarm due to land occupation in competition with other land uses, a section analyses land occupation and alternative solutions to conventional large PV plants such as agrivoltaics. Finally different results for life cycle assessment of emerging organic and hybrid technologies are presented.