As an industry claiming particular relevance in the fight to address climate change and other environmental impacts associated with our seemingly insatiable demand for energy, it makes sense that the PV community should pursue the goal of understanding the full range of impacts associated with production, use and disposal of PV equipment.

Of course, this is not a new topic; researchers have for many years been monitoring and developing solutions to limit resource and health and safety implications of some of the more exotic raw materials used in PV manufacture. They have also been at pains to report aspects such as energy payback time for modules and complete systems to counter accusations that PV manufacture requires more energy than a system generates during its lifetime. That particular ‘urban myth’ has been robustly dispelled, as reported for instance by IEA PVPS back in 1997 (see report IEA PVPS T1 1998 4). But in this age of corporate social responsibility broader life-cycle issues – such as materials handling, component reuse, recycling and safe disposal – are increasingly hot topics.

IEA PVPS, through Task 1: Information Exchange and Task 10: Urban-scale PV has also recently renewed its activity in the area, and is now defining a specific new Task on Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) with a view to overcoming knowledge and awareness gaps on the sustainability of the technology, and to assist long-term ethical analyses of the industry, particularly for investors.

A Task Definition Workshop will be held in Barcelona on 8th June, coinciding with the European PV Solar Energy Conference, to focus IEA PVPS research into EH&S issues. Further details on the scope of the new task will appear in future editions of PV Power.

Information

• Greg Watt
  E-mail: gwatt@efa.com.au

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