Assessing energy technologies sustainability: upscaling photovoltaics using absolute LCA
Lucas Riondet, Mercedes del Río Merino, Véronique Perrot-Bernardet, Peggy Zwolinski
Abstract
The upscaling of a technology has different facets that should be considered with anticipatory environmental assessment to deem its sustainability before industrialization. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is widely used to assess a product sustainability based on technologies. LCA is however usually applied after technology deployment, as a comparative approach validating the efficiency of the previous technology usage. Anticipatory LCA developments are therefore needed to help designers and engineers to investigate the sustainability of future technology implementations. This article paves the way to enhance ex-ante (or prospective) studies with an absolute sustainability framework, thus demonstrating the incompleteness of current developments on the upscaling from the designer's perspective. This is achieved through a case study applied on two photovoltaic technologies, silicon mono-crystalline and silicon/perovskite tandem in France, and in the current and the 2050 perspectives. Results show that assigning absolute sustainability targets at the technology level provides a new design framework, resulting in a go/no-go strategy. The minimal environmental performance requirements associated to technology deployment conditions through scenarios are identified. During this process, however, questioning the temporal and spatial scope of the study remains crucial to design a sustainable technology and the corresponding service it provides.