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Assessing the sustainability of emerging technologies: A probabilistic LCA method applied to advanced photovoltaics
A key source of uncertainty in the environmental assessment of emerging technologies is the unpredictable manufacturing, use, and end-of-life pathways a technology can take as it progresses from lab to industrial scale. This uncertainty has sometimes been addressed in life cycle assessment (LCA) by performing scenario analysis. However, the scenario-based approach can be misleading if the probabilities of occurrence of each scenario are not incorporated. It also brings about a practical problem; considering all possible pathways, the number of scenarios can quickly become unmanageable. We present a modelling approach in which all possible pathways are modelled as a single product system with uncertain processes. These processes may or may not be selected once the technology reaches industrial scale according to given probabilities. An uncertainty analysis of such a system provides a single probability distribution for each impact score. This distribution accounts for uncertainty about the product system’s final configuration along with other sources of uncertainty. Furthermore, a global sensitivity analysis can identify whether the future selection of certain pathways over others will be of importance for the variance of the impact score. We illustrate the method with a case study of an emerging technology for front-side metallization of photovoltaic cells.
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- All authors
- Blanco Rocha, C.F.; Cucurachi, S.; Guinee, J.B.; Vijver, M.G.; Peijnenburg, W.J.G.M.; Trattnig, R.; Heijungs, R.
- Date
- 2020-06-20
- Journal
- Journal of Cleaner Production
- Volume
- 259
- Pages
- 120968