EPJ Photovoltaics 15, 18 (2024)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2024015

Original Article

Prioritizing circular economy strategies for sustainable PV deployment at the TW scale

¹ National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), Golden, CO, USA
² Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

^* e-mail: heather.mirletz@nrel.gov

Received: 25 September 2023
Accepted: 20 March 2024
Published online: 15 May 2024

Abstract

Global decarbonization requires an unprecedented scale-up of photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing and deployment. The material demand and eventual end of life management associated with multi-TW scale deployment poses many challenges. Circular Economy (CE) and it's associated R-Actions (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) have been proposed to mitigate end of life management and material sourcing concerns. However, CE metrics typically focus on a single product and only consider mass, excluding energy flows. This work leverages the PV in Circular Economy (PV ICE) tool to quantify the deployment, mass, and energy impacts of R-Actions and proposed sustainable PV designs in the context of achieving energy transition deployment goals (75 TW in 2050). 13 module scenarios are established and evaluated across 6 capacity, mass and energy metrics to identify tradeoffs and priorities. We find that increasing module efficiency can reduce near-term material demands up to 30% and improve energy metrics by up to 9%. Material circularity (recycling) can minimize lifecycle wastes and reduce material demands at the cost of higher energy demands. Increasing module lifetime, including reliability improvements and reuse strategies, is effective at reducing both material (>10%) and energy demands (24%). Uniquely, lifetime improvements maximize benefits and minimize the harms across all six metrics while achieving multi-TW scale deployment.