Environmental benefits of reduced electricity use exceed impacts from lead use for perovskite based tandem solar cell

The balance between efficiency, stability and environmental impacts in perovskite solar cells: a review

“…This result is confirmed by a study on the toxicity impacts of the lead used in the formation of the light absorber layer, that were found to be negligible by Celik et al [26,27]. Other studies still found emission of lead to air during production, and emission to water during end-of-life, that are the main contributors to the human toxicity category of impacts, and recommend more research into worker exposure and worker safety measures during processing in a future large scale factory [20]. More recently, a detailed study of lead environmental impacts in electricity production by perovskite solar cell based PV systems throughout its full life cycle found that it can be four times lower and the potential toxic emissions can be 20 times lower than those in representative US electricity mixes, assuming that PV operational lifetimes reach 20 years [28].…”

“…For perovskite solar cells this approach has proved to be effective for tandems, where the main challenge to reach theoretical efficiencies in tandem is to optimize the interconnection layers [20]. Manufacturing two terminal tandem cells reduces up to 30% of the environmental impacts equivalent to two single junction devices, mainly because of the reduced use of glass.…”

“…In this article, the most standard approach has been used to select references and if necessary to convert to units (FU or energy-related) which allows for a fair comparison of results [175]. Several LCA studies have been published recently, starting with the historical review of perovskite solar cell technology by Jung et alThis review included some information about environmental impacts [23], some focused on a specific process or device architecture [15,17], others on comparison between lead or lead-free alternatives [18], and more recently with a focus on tandem devices [20,21,27].…”

“…Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardized methodology which provides detailed analysis of the inventory of materials, energy inputs and subprocesses for the whole cycle of fabrication, operational phase (use) and end-of-life of devices. The effort by the scientific community to provide LCA studies for different processing routes of PSCs has increased and some general consensus is arising regarding the main recommendations for a sustainable production of methylammonium based perovskite solar cells or other devices [15][16][17]; some with more focus on the lead toxicity problems [18,19]; others focusing on the most recent tandem approaches [20,21]. Finally, economic cost analysis and first calculations of envisaged levelized cost of electricity for perovskite photovoltaic technology are being published very recently [22].…”

Progress towards highly stable and lead-free perovskite solar cells

“…The only difference is the percentage of contribution between these two processing methods. Additionally, the life cycle impact analysis revealed that in both deposition processes, the impact was focused primarily on the human toxicity (cancer effect) and freshwater ecotoxicity, which is due to lead emission [65,66]. However, the article suggested that PSC technology does not pose concern in its raw materials extraction, synthesis of the starting materials and manufacture of the PSC as compared to the other solar cell technologies.…”