Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Relevant Impacts of Concentrating Solar Technologies

The “Network 4 Energy Sustainable Transition (NEST)” project, Spoke 1 focuses on the topics of innovative solar photovoltaics, solar concentrating power and solar concentrating thermal technologies, with consideration on life cycle assessment and eco-design of the technologies. As a part of preliminary results of the project, this paper reports the greenhouse gas emissions of concentrating solar technologies by reviewing the life cycle assessment studies. The paper first identifies the technologies with their specific components, being followed by a description of life cycle method choices. The life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of the technologies are reviewed by the types of technologies and the choice of assessment methods. The results indicate that the carbon footprints of concentrating solar technologies are in the range of 1.64e-02 to 3.92e-01 kgCO2eq per kWh, with the increasing order of magnitude from high concentrating photovoltaics to concentrating solar power, and concentrating solar power combined with fossil fuels. The greenhouse gas payback time of high concentrating photovoltaics is around 1 year, while the greenhouse payback time of the concentrating photovoltaics with low concentration ratio is up to 2.2 years. In terms of hotspot, manufacturing and operation are the largest contributors to the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of the technologies.