Carbon Emissions of Solar Cells Compared with Traditional Generating

Abstract

China's dual-carbon program is underway, and although photovoltaic (PV) power generation is not currently able to compete with traditional thermal power generation, it is expected to play a key role in a number of areas, and PV technology has the potential to be an important part of the energy future. The aim of this paper is to explore whether PV power technology has the potential to continue to develop as a large-scale clean energy source by comparing the carbon emissions of PV and thermal power generation in 2021. The importance of this study is that it fills a research gap in terms of carbon emissions from the entire process of PV power generation. By studying and analyzing data on China's energy consumption in 2021, this paper compares PV power generation and thermal power generation in terms of carbon emissions and footprint in 2021. The results show that at the development stage of PV power generation, it produces much lower carbon emissions than thermal power generation, so society can feel at ease with the large-scale construction of more PV power plants for testing and research. However, the calculation method used in this paper is relatively simple and does not take into account all the details in the processes of production, transportation and commerce. As a result, the data are not precise enough. Future research can be devoted to building more accurate mathematical models to simulate the carbon emissions produced by PV power generation and thermal power generation for comparison.