Photovoltaic (PV) is one of the technologies at the base of decarbonising electricity production plans in Italy. PV industry is experiencing rapid growth and datasets available in LCA databases are neither updated nor representative of the national context. Therefore, the study presents an updated, and representative LCA modelling of the Italian PV mix for 2021 and of that expected for 2030.
For both PV mixes, data provided by an Italian company operating on energy i.e. GSE and the annual reports of “International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaic ” of VDMA were used. Task 12 reports of “Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme” of International Energy Agency, together with primary data from PV industry, were the main data source for the creation of new datasets for each type of module, technology, and plant configuration.
The environmental performances of the modelled Italian PV mixes (for 2021 and 2030) were evaluated and compared with those of the Italian PV mix of Ecoinvent database in function of 1 kWh of electricity produced.
The new PV mixes showed a significant reduction in environmental impacts. This was mainly due to: (i) higher equivalent hours of operation; (ii) higher modules efficiency (iii) updating of the inventory data for the production processes of all PV plants components; (iv) addition of new datasets about the innovative PV technologies which are not present in the Ecoinvent datasets.