How much carbon dioxide has the Chinese PV manufacturing industry emitted?

Abstract

China is the country with the largest production of photovoltaic (PV) products, therefore, the issue of carbon emissions from its PV manufacturing industry is particularly important. Thus, based on its “streamlined” organizational structure, we use the life cycle assessment and the emission factor to calculate the carbon emissions, updating and correcting the emission factors of each stage. In addition, we compares the carbon emission intensity of PV modules manufacturing with the manufacturing industry as a whole, and analyzes the carbon emissions transfer in the import and export. The result shows that the unit emissions value of Chinese PV modules is 342,892 tons of CO2 per GWp, and the industry's carbon emissions were 42,724,343 tons and 62,406,344 tons in 2020 and 2021, respectively, and the carbon emission intensity of China's PV modules manufacturing is only 72.03% of that of the manufacturing industry as a whole. This would represent that China's PV manufacturing industry is not a high-energy consumption and high-emission industry. In 2020 and 2021, the net transferred carbon emissions of China's PV products through import and export were 28,508,597 tons and 33,861,939 tons, respectively, and accounted for 66.6% and 54.3% of the total emissions from the industry, respectively, meaning the PV manufacturing industry has not caused excessive pollution to the domestic market through import and export trade.