CO2 Emissions of PV in the Perspective of a Renewable Energy Economy

Abstract

The wide range of greenhouse gas emissions (30-300 g CO2-eq/kWh) quoted for PV generated electricity in life cycle assessment studies so far is shown to be mainly caused by the different CO2 emission of energy consumed in manufacture of PV modules. A better way of comparing the CO2-eq emissions would be to calculate the direct CO2 emissions of PV module manufacturing and quote these separately from the indirect CO2 emissions due to energy consumption. It is shown that the indirect CO2-eq emission makes up more than 90% of the total, indicating the importance of calculating and reporting these two emission sources separately.