Elsevier

Energy Policy

Volume 33, Issue 3, February 2005, Pages 289-296
Energy Policy

Environmental impacts from the solar energy technologies

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0301-4215(03)00241-6Get rights and content

Abstract

Solar energy systems (photovoltaics, solar thermal, solar power) provide significant environmental benefits in comparison to the conventional energy sources, thus contributing, to the sustainable development of human activities. Sometimes however, their wide scale deployment has to face potential negative environmental implications. These potential problems seem to be a strong barrier for a further dissemination of these systems in some consumers.

To cope with these problems this paper presents an overview of an Environmental Impact Assessment. We assess the potential environmental intrusions in order to ameliorate them with new technological innovations and good practices in the future power systems. The analysis provides the potential burdens to the environment, which include—during the construction, the installation and the demolition phases, as well as especially in the case of the central solar technologies—noise and visual intrusion, greenhouse gas emissions, water and soil pollution, energy consumption, labour accidents, impact on archaeological sites or on sensitive ecosystems, negative and positive socio-economic effects.

Section snippets

Potential environmental impacts of solar energy technologies and mitigation measures

Every energy generation and transmission method affects the environment. As it is obvious conventional generating options can damage air, climate, water, land and wildlife, landscape, as well as raise the levels of harmful radiation. Renewable technologies are substantially safer offering a solution to many environmental and social problems associated with fossil and nuclear fuels (EC (1995), EC (1997)).

Solar energy technologies (SETs) provide obvious environmental advantages in comparison to

Generic issues

Furthermore, unfavourable effects of SETs are usually minor and they can be minimized by appropriate mitigation measures. The potential environmental burdens of SETs are regularly site specific, depending on the size and nature of the project. As it is obvious from Table 2, Table 3, these burdens are usually associated with the loss of amenity (e.g. visual impact or noise—during the installation and the demolition phases) and the impacts can be minimized by (ETSU, 1996; Gekas et al., 2002;

Environmental impacts from solar thermal heating systems

Though the production of solar thermal (ST) systems requires reasonable quantities of materials, insignificant amounts are also consumed during their operation; at that time the only potential environmental pollutant arises from the coolant change, which can be easily controlled by good working practice. The accidental leakage of coolant systems can cause fire and gas releases from vaporized coolant, unfavourably affecting public health and safety. On the contrary, the large-scale deployment of

Environmental impacts from photovoltaic power generation

Photovoltaics (PV) are seen to be generally of benign environmental impact, generating no noise or chemical pollutants during use. It is one of the most viable renewable energy technologies for use in an urban environment, replacing existing building cladding materials. It is also an attractive option for use in scenic areas and National Parks, where the avoidance of pylons and wires is a major advantage.

Environmental impacts from solar thermal electricity

The limited deployment of ST electricity to date means that there is little actual experience of the environmental impacts that such a scheme may have.

Similarly to other SETs, ST electricity systems present the basic environmental benefit of the displacement or the avoidance of emissions associated with conventional electricity generation (Tsoutsos et al., 2003a). During their operation, these systems have no emissions. Some emissions do arise from other phases of their life cycle (primarily

Conclusions and recommendations

SETs present tremendous environmental benefits when compared to the conventional energy sources. In addition to not exhausting natural resources, their main advantage is, in most cases, total absence of almost any air emissions or waste products. In other words, SE can be considered as an almost absolute clean and safe energy source.

Furthermore, the use of SETs can have additional environmental benefits, associated with:

  • (i)

    the SE potential to be employed in stand-alone applications (e.g.,

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