One of the biggest and common priority across the globe for the next decades is to reduce world’s carbon emission and keep the global temperature rise this century below 2°C under the Paris agreement. Renewable energies are at the forefront to achieve such an ambitious challenge, and more particularly, solar energy is at the center of this undertaking as the lowest-cost alternative. The growth of solar electricity generation is expected to reach a cumulative capacity of 2840 GW by 2030 and 8519 GW by 2050, which is equivalent to eighteen times the global capacity of 2018. But what happens to Photovoltaic (PV) systems at the end of their lifespan?
PV systems provide zero-emission power generation through their lifespan of 25-30 years, however, it is crucial to ensure that these products remain sustainable over their whole life-cycle. While strong efforts have been invested for the manufacturing stage to reduce environmental impacts, the End-of-Life (EoL) of PV devices remains a major challenge that PHOTORAMA will tackle with smart and efficient solutions.
The upcoming PV waste has been estimated with substantial cumulative volumes of ~10 Million tons in Europe and 60-78 Mtons worldwide expected by 2050. Nowadays, PV wastes are for the most part landfilled, which is definitely not a satisfactory solution looking at the million tons of PV EoL modules forthcoming. But this is only the beginning! Although most of the PV manufacturing industry has moved to Asia, the EoL PV modules are in Europe, making the waste management its own responsibility.
PHOTORAMA is a complete and systemic solution to take on this responsibility. Waste management from collection to recovery, including recycling of secondary Raw Materials (RM) as new products, is completely integrated by PHOTORAMA solutions in interrelated values chains to create a new ecosystem of innovation.
ZSI will lead tasks on social acceptance, trust building and dissemination of the processes and technologies in PHOTORAMA. Together, two of the departments of ZSI, Research Policy & Development and Technology & Knowledge, will support the project with their expertise on survey design, impact evaluation, participative methods, science communication, co-creation and stakeholder involvement.
