5EP.1 / 1EP.1
Sustainability

We continue today with a preview of the plenary talks scheduled for the last conference day on Friday, 27th September.

This Friday plenary, titled “Sustainability”, is the last session of the EU PVSEC 2024 in Vienna, lasting from 10:30 to 12:00. This Topic is gaining increasing interest, partly because of the fear that PV Systems will leave us with a massive waste problem at the end of their life, and partly because of the wider aspects of sustainability, like raw material availability or acceptance by society in general.

We provide you with four presentations which shall give you insights into the complexity of sustainable PV deployment.

While Silicon certainly has no scarcity problem, the first plenary talk 5EP.1.1, titled “Scarcity of Materials in the PV Value Chain”, will present many other materials used in PV technology that are either scarce, expensive, or both. This includes not only Silver, but all ingredients of active layers in CIGS, CdTe or Perovskite modules. The plenary talk by Delft University of Technology will certainly compare the levels of scarcity (and geographical dependencies) and highlight the research into alternative and abundant materials such as graphene.

As already mentioned in the previous talk, silver remains a major critical raw material. The Presentation 1EP.1.2, titled “Copper as Cost-Effective Alternative to Silver for Si Solar Cell Metallization – Status and Outlook”, details the current most promising option for using an alternative material for contacts. While copper is also limited in supply, it is certainly much more available at lower cost than silver. Together with aluminium, these two are the most promising alternatives as they are more abundant and less critical in terms of supply chain risks. Copper is a suitable choice for replacing silver on an industrial scale. The authors from Fraunhofer ISE will present several approaches to significantly reduce or completely replace silver with copper on TOPCon and SHJ solar cells. We will witness the pros and cons of copper as an electrode material for Silicon Cells in this talk.

With the continuous increase of PV installations, concerns have risen regarding the number of modules reaching the end of their service life. The plenary presentation 5EP.1.3, titled “Towards Reuse-ready PV: A Perspective on Recent Advances, Practices and Future Challenges”, offers re-use and repair as an alternative to costly recycling to recover precious materials. Such a “second” life for modules has the potential to avoid an estimated module-waste stream of about 8000 kt by the year 2030, as the authors calculated. The authors’ consortia, via the speaker from CEA, propose a “triage” for defective modules leading either to a four-step scheme to re-use the modules after repair or to a recycling facility. It is quite an innovative approach that we will hear in this plenary, addressing an increasing problem for which a good solution has yet to be found. We will also be informed about the way forward to implement such a system on a large scale.

The last plenary presentation 5EP.1.4, finally turns the focus on the citizens, who ultimately should benefit from all our efforts to make PV better, more efficient, and cheaper. It is titled “Enhancing Citizens’ Participation in PV Deployment” and will provide an overview of the ETIP PV White Paper, focusing on the strategies to enhance citizens’ participation in the deployment of PV technologies. It will certainly highlight the need for incentives, administrative adjustments, and integrated support, when citizens transition to become prosumers. They propose a set of measures, most prominently the creation of dedicated support agencies to guide citizens through the complexity of realising their PV projects. As this presentation is the very last of the EU PVSEC Scientific Programme in Vienna, we can also look forward to some key messages that everyone can take home and, with some fortune, encourage friends, neighbours, and communities to take part in the fascinating PV challenge.

This concludes our plenary “sneak” preview for the EU PVSEC 2024. We hope that you find themes of interest for you, notably in the plenaries, but also in the many oral and visual presentations described in the comprehensive programme.

Together with all presenters, we are looking forward to giving you a warm welcome in Vienna!

Plenary Summary by
Heinz Ossenbrink
Former European Commission Joint Research Centre