Environmental effects evaluation of photovoltaic power industry in China on life cycle assessment

Abstract

Along with the rapid development of Photovoltaic (PV) power industry, it is critical to evaluate its environmental effects based on life-cycle assessment, both of carbon emissions and carbon reduction. However, there are few studies focusing on the this issue. And almost all of the existing a few researches employ the carbon emission factor of the whole life-cycle for carbon emission calculation, and do not take distinctions between sub-stages into consideration. Thus, the aim of this study is to estimate carbon emissions of PV power industry based on sub-stages in life-cycle, and evaluate environmental effects of China’s PV power industry during 2012–2017. Especially, carbon emission results utilizing the carbon emission factor of the whole life-cycle and sub-stages are compared. It is revealed that PV power industry’s carbon emission of China is increasing steadily, and using carbon emission factor of the whole life-cycle could neglect 90.77% of carbon emissions compared to using carbon emission factor of sub-stages. Furthermore, China’s PV power industry plays a negative role in reducing carbon emissions, with total net carbon reduction of −64.88 × 109 kg carbon dioxide equivalent. Among six power grids, only northwestern and southern power grid make positive contribution in reducing carbon emissions, while the other four power grids make negative contribution in reducing carbon emissions. This study provides expressive evidences for policy makers and investors to balance the role PV power played.