While many technologies make claims on the moral high-grounds of sustainability and environment, numbers to back the claims are not quite so common.

The PV industry and the technology’s supporters in general do not enjoy the luxury of being able to ignore the challenges that are sometimes leveled at their technology – indeed, the amount of public funding supporting PV worldwide demands that a strong position be taken on these issues. Two activities within IEA PVPS are of interest. Work carried out within Task 10, Urban Scale PV Applications has been published in conjunction with the European Photovoltaic Technology Platform and the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA). The report, ‘Compared Assessment of Selected Environmental Indicators of Photovoltaic Electricity in OECD Cities’, prepared by HESPUL with the support of the French Agency for Environment and Energy Management (ADEME), presents the results of a 26 OECD country survey.

Existing studies have been reviewed with regard to the energy content of PV systems, to calculate the so-called energy pay-back time (defined as the time in years needed for a PV-system to ‘reimburse’ the initial energy investment) and the derived energy return factor (the number of times a PV system will reimburse its energy content during its commercial life). Other indicators such as displaced CO2 emissions and spent nuclear fuels from electricity generation are presented where relevant for the surveyed countries.

The performance of PV systems is assessed in the full version of the report on a country-by-country basis and even includes a city-by-city approach in larger countries where the potential for urban-scale integrated PV is highest, covering 41 main cities in total in the 26 countries.

Further to the workshop on PV Environmental Health and Safety issues held in conjunction with the European PV Solar Energy Conference in Barcelona in June 2005 and reported in the previous issue of this newsletter, the IEA PVPS Programme has made progress towards this topic becoming a new activity of international collaboration within the Programme. At least ten of the member countries of IEA PVPS have agreed to commit the resources necessary to undertake this activity and, in true reflection of international collaboration, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) and the USA have agreed to jointly lead the new task. Workplan development is underway with an initial meeting scheduled to be held in Paris in June 2006, and it is likely that the focus of activity will include both life cycle assessment and waste and recycling issues. Progress will be reported in the next issue of the newsletter.

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