Abstract
Due to the rapid development of recycling technologies in recent years, more data have appeared in the literature on the environmental impact of the final stages of the life cycle of wind and solar energy. The use of these data in the eco-design of modern power generation systems can help eliminate the mistakes and shortcomings when planning wind and solar power plants and make them more eco-efficient. The aim of this study is to extend current knowledge of the environmental impacts of most common renewables throughout the entire life cycle. It examines recent literature data on life cycle assessments of various technologies for recycling of wind turbines and photovoltaic (PV) panels and develops the recommendations for the eco-design of energy systems based on solar and wind power. The study draws several general conclusions. (i) The contribution of further improvements in PV’s recycling technologies to environmental impacts throughout the entire life cycle is insignificant. Therefore, it is more beneficial to focus further efforts on economic parameters, in particular, on achieving the economic feasibility of recycling small volumes of PV-waste. (ii) For wind power, the issue of transporting bulky components of wind turbines to and from the installation location is critical for improving the eco-design of the entire life cycle.
Highlights
The transition to a circular economy can significantly contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular, Goal 12 (“ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns”)
To operate with life cycle assessment (LCA) results performed for different system boundaries and functional units, we used data only from the sources where the results were given in physical units
Even though assessing the environmental impact of the life cycle of the fastest-growing types of renewable energy is a popular topic in scientific literature, it has still not been studied enough
Summary
The transition to a circular economy can significantly contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular, Goal 12 (“ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns”). A better design can make a product more durable, more suited for repair, modernization, or restoration. A better design of manufacturing processes will reduce the environmental burden throughout the entire life cycle of the product. There has been a growing interest in the issues of optimal choice of energy technologies in academic literature. Turconi and co-authors [1] compared the main technologies of electricity generation based on hard coal, lignite, natural gas, oil, nuclear power, and several renewable sources by the amount of emissions. Poinssot and colleagues [2] weigh environmental footprints of a closed cycle of nuclear energy against the environmental footprint of an open cycle. Paper [3] examined carbon emissions and water consumption of electricity generation
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