Methodological insights on Life Cycle Assessment of solar energy technologies

Renewable energies are reliable sources to move the world toward a sustainable energy economy, to achieve the emission reduction targets and to face the shortage of worldwide fossil fuels reserves. The energy and environmental assessment of renewable energy technologies (RETs) may not leave out considerations on the impacts of the background system, including also the production, use, and disposal of such systems. In this context the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an established methodology to estimate energy and environmental benefits and drawbacks of RETs and to identify components and life cycle stages having the largest impacts. Authors focus on the analysis of solar energy systems. Starting from a literature review of published studies they discuss the methodological issues and criticalities related to the study of a solar energy system, with particular attention to: selection of functional unit, geographical variability of data, data quality, reference time frame and end-of-life treatments. Authors point out that a robust evaluation of the energy and environmental benefits of RETs should carefully handle the methodological criticalities identified in the Chapter, and successively quantify the uncertainty and variability of results by means of a comprehensive sensitivity analysis.