Abstract
AbstractEstimating the environmental impact of emerging technologies at different stages of development is uncertain but necessary to guide investment, research, and development. Here, we propose a systematic procedure to assess the future impacts of emerging technologies. In the technology development stage (technology readiness level < 9), the recommended experience mechanisms to take into account are (a) process changes, (b) size scaling effects, and (c) process synergies. These developments can be based on previous experience with similar technologies or quantified through regression or engineering dimension calculations. In the industrial development phase, (d) industrial learning, based on experience curves or roadmaps, and (e) external developments should be included. External developments, such as changes in the electricity mix can be included with information from integrated assessment models. We show the applicability of our approach with the greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint evaluation for the production of copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) photovoltaic laminate. We found that the GHG footprint per kilowatt peak of produced CIGS laminate is expected to decrease by 83% going from pilot to mature industrial scale production with the largest decrease being due to expected process changes. The feasibility of applying our approach in practice would greatly benefit from the development of a database containing information on size scaling and experience rates for a wide variety of materials, products, and technologies.
Highlights
Emerging technologies are expected to have a profound contribution to sustainable development, their utilization can create a complex web of unforeseen negative environmental consequences (United Nations, 2018)
The third change was the replacement of the transparent conductive oxide (TCO) made of water sensitive zinc oxides (i-ZnO/aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO)) with a Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO) made of indium tin oxide (ITO) on Intrinsic Zinc Oxide (i-ZnO), which is less moisture sensitive (Coyle et al, 2013)
In this paper we presented a novel approach to perform prospective Life cycle assessment (LCA), which can be used to extend existing guidelines for conducting LCA, and we successfully demonstrated the application of this approach on a copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) case study
Summary
Emerging technologies are expected to have a profound contribution to sustainable development, their utilization can create a complex web of unforeseen negative environmental consequences (United Nations, 2018). Van der Giesen et al (2020) regard these umbrella terms for the same exercise They argue that the term ex ante indicates assessment before market introduction of a technology, whereas prospective LCA can be performed on established technologies to estimate future environmental impacts. The work of Buyle et al (2019) deserves special attention, for they provide an extensive overview of techniques to upscale technologies and model continuous improvement of mature technologies While all of these studies provide valuable contributions to organize the relevant steps and provide practical recommendations for prospective LCA, an explicit, overarching protocol for performing a prospective LCA, including a demonstration of its application, is missing. This technology was selected because of the on-going research into design optimization, the known mechanisms for technological developments and the in-house availability of data
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