CO2 emission reduction effect of photovoltaic industry through 2060 in China

Xiaopeng Guo, Yining Dong and Dongfang Ren

Energy, 2023, vol. 269, issue C

Abstract: In the coming four-decade, China will face serious challenge while shifting to carbon neutral. Photovoltaic (PV) power, as one of the most promising clean energies, is seen as an important focus for decarbonization of the power sector in China. The novelty of this study is to use life cycle assessment (LCA) methods to analyze the CO2 emission reduction of the PV generation industry before 2060 base on the amount of energy and resources consumed and PV generation's CO2 reduction benefits during the whole industrial chain. This paper aims to examine CO2 emission reduction contribution, we firstly compute the historical emissions and predict future PV waste and new power capacity from 2010 to 2060. Then, considering the change of industrial structure and technological evolution, the yearly life cycle CO2 emission from producing stage to recycling stage is calculated. The key results show that the unit CO2 emission of PV system producing will reduce 88.07% from 2010 to 2060. PV generation industry's total CO2 emission has reached its neutrality between 2014 and 2015, and will reduce 33.03 Giga tons CO2-eq till 2060. The findings can offer relevant insights to low-carbon development of China's PV industry and will provide suggestions for policy-making.

Keywords: PV generation Industry; CO2 emission reduction; Life cycle assessment; Carbon neutral (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544223000865
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:269:y:2023:i:c:s0360544223000865

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2023.126692

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().