Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing of Building Integrated Photovoltaics

The development of solar energy technologies required the increasing efficiency in converting solar radiation into energy, as well as innovative materials and structure to go beyond the conventional power conversion ratio. In line with these innovations, there are concerns of greenhouse gas emissions, material consumption and other environmental impacts of the technologies. This paper is under the framework of the Nest Spoke 1 project to apply life cycle thinking approach to quantify and evaluate the environmental impacts and cost of the building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) panel, consequently promoting the eco-design of innovative solar technologies. The paper followed the ISO14040 and ISO14044 for conducting the life cycle assessment (LCA) study, with reference to the guidelines of International Energy Agency for LCA on solar PV and Product Environmental Footprint of the European Commission. All the environmental impacts of the BIPV panel are quantified from cradle to grave per 1 kWh of electricity. The same functional unit is applied for life cycle costs, with consideration of manufacturing costs only. Climate change impact of BIPV panel is at 4.30E-02 kgCO2e per kWh of electricity. Fossil resource use is at 5.28E-01 MJ, and mineral and metal resource use is at 2.80E-06 kg Sb eq. Most of the impacts originates from the panel production stages and the impact from recycling the panel is negligible. Besides, LCOE generated from BIPV module is at 0.03 EUR per kWh, or 131.63 EUR per m2 of module.