Environmental life cycle analysis of nonconventional thin-film photovoltaics: The case of dye-sensitized solar devices

Abstract

In the context of constantly growing global energy demand, the interest of the scientific community is progressively moving toward renewable energy sources and sustainable growth. The search for alternative energy sources and the technologies necessary for their exploitation, able to combine efficiency, ease of use, and reduced environmental impact is therefore an important challenge for our civilization. Photovoltaics (PV) is one of the technologies available to produce electricity from solar energy and recent research turned itself to the development of devices based on alternative materials, like the dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) that have attracted much interest because of their potentially low cost of production. Thanks to the employment of readily available materials, they actually present drastically lower economic and environmental costs compared with traditional silicon-based cells even though they are not efficient enough yet to be industrially competitive. In this study, we present the results of life cycle assessment (LCA) for the production process of DSCs. The environmental performance of a virtual roof-top grid-connected DSC system in comparison with several advanced thin-film PV technologies for energy production is also described. This analysis will be pivotal in understanding the environmental dynamics, the benefits and drawbacks associated with the production of DSCs in comparison with other thin-film PV technologies.