Title :
Life cycle assessment of photovoltaics: perceptions, needs, and challenges
Author :
Fthenakis, V.M. ; Alsema, E.A. ; de Wild-Scholten, M.J.
Author_Institution :
Brookhaven Nat. Lab., Upton, NY, USA
Abstract :
High impact publications recently depicted PV technologies as having higher external environmental costs than those of nuclear energy and natural-gas-fueled power plants. These assessments are based on old data and unbalanced assumptions, and they illustrate the need for LCA data describing the continuously improving photovoltaic systems and the inclusion of social benefits in this comparison.
Keywords :
life cycle costing; remaining life assessment; solar cells; external environmental costs; life cycle assessment; photovoltaics; social benefits; Accidents; Computational Intelligence Society; Costs; Crystallization; Databases; Fuels; Photovoltaic cells; Photovoltaic systems; Production; Silicon;
Conference_Titel :
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2005. Conference Record of the Thirty-first IEEE
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-8707-4
DOI :
10.1109/PVSC.2005.1488464
