As solar power deployment accelerates to meet climate targets and rising electricity demand, the work tackles the challenge of making sure this growth is both scalable and sustainable rather than simply shifting environmental burdens elsewhere in the energy system.
Published in Nature Communications, the study examines the full life cycle of silicon photovoltaic technology, from raw material extraction through to the production of state-of-the-art solar panels expected to dominate the market through 2035.
Researchers from Northumbria University and the Universities of Birmingham, Oxford and Warwick quantify how advances in solar cell efficiency and changes in manufacturing practices can drive environmental gains that go well beyond cutting greenhouse gas emissions alone.
Using detailed life cycle assessment, the team evaluates how different electricity mixes used in manufacturing influence overall environmental impact and shows that realistic decarbonisation of global power systems during production could avoid up to 8.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions.
According to the authors, that scale of avoided emissions corresponds to around 6.3 percent of the remaining global carbon budget compatible with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
"Solar photovoltaics is a critical technology that can be used globally now to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create energy security," said Professor Neil Beattie, Professor of Energy Innovation at Northumbria University and director of the study. "This is especially important as our demand for electricity soars over the next decade driven by applications in transport, heating and digital infrastructure for AI.
"As we scale-up photovoltaics to multi-terawatt levels to meet this demand, it's important that we do so sustainably. Our research demonstrates that significant savings in environmental impact - including carbon dioxide emissions - are possible through manufacturing.
"More specifically, we find that this impact is sensitive to the composition of the electricity mix where the solar panels are made and we should work to decarbonise this as much as possible."
Professor John Murphy, Chair of Electronic Materials at the University of Birmingham and co-author, said silicon-based photovoltaic technologies already have immediate relevance for the United Kingdom's drive toward Net Zero and will continue to play a major role in decarbonising the power system.
He noted that the work stems from a new collaboration between four UK research groups focused on sustainability across the entire photovoltaics supply chain, from raw materials through manufacturing and ultimately to end-of-life treatment and recycling.
Co-author Sebastian Bonilla, Associate Professor of Materials Science at the University of Oxford, said the sector has reached a pivotal moment as solar power rapidly scales to become a major share of global electricity generation.
He added that the study uniquely maps the environmental impacts of the ongoing solar expansion and provides guidance on how choices of materials, device architectures and manufacturing locations can minimise harm while maximising the benefits of terawatt-scale clean electricity.
Beyond climate change, the researchers assess 16 environmental impact categories, highlighting trade-offs that must be managed as technologies advance and production scales up.
One key finding is that next-generation high-efficiency technology can cut the climate impact of panels by 6.5 percent but also raises critical mineral depletion by 15.2 percent because of greater silver use in solar cell electrical contacts.
That result points to an urgent need for innovation in alternative contact materials such as copper and underscores the importance of treating sustainability as a system-level problem rather than optimising a single metric like carbon emissions.
The authors argue that the analysis can help industrial decision makers and policy makers pinpoint where targeted improvements in the supply chain will yield the greatest environmental benefits as manufacturing grows to terawatt levels.
Looking ahead to 2035, the study projects that solar panels installed by that date could avoid at least 25 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions relative to conventional power generation in less than half of their operational lifetimes.
Study co-author Dr Nicholas Grant, Associate Professor at the University of Warwick, said terawatt-scale photovoltaic manufacturing demands a sharper focus on its full environmental footprint and that targeted improvements across the supply chain can support rapid global deployment while avoiding gigatonnes of manufacturing-related emissions if systems are installed by 2035.
Beattie emphasised that even when manufacturing impacts are taken into account, solar photovoltaics remains one of the lowest-impact and most sustainable options for electricity generation across its full life cycle.
He said that the priority now should be to accelerate deployment while simultaneously improving manufacturing practices so that the technology's environmental advantages are maximised as it scales.
Research Report: Maximising environmental savings from silicon photovoltaics manufacturing to 2035
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Northumbria University
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