article · Sustainable Horizons
Photovoltaic systems represent a leading renewable alternative to fossil fuels, yet the industry predominantly operates on a linear economic model. To address sustainability concerns, this research evaluates the sector through a circular economy framework based on the 10Rs of sustainability. It provides comprehensive models examining environmental, sustainability, business, deployment, and development dimensions. These frameworks detail the technical roadmaps, tools, and pathways required to transition solar technology towards circularity and meet global circular economy targets and Sustainable Development Goals. The review also clarifies prevalent conceptual confusions within the field, specifically distinguishing between the recycling principle, dismantling techniques, and recovery methods. By delivering a structured, practical approach, the study connects existing academic literature directly with industrial practice to support sustainable lifecycle management for solar systems.
The rapid global rollout of solar panels risks creating vast amounts of electronic waste if panels are simply discarded after use. Clarifying circular economy principles and outlining practical pathways to reuse, dismantle, and recover components ensures that renewable energy expansion remains truly sustainable and aligns with broader climate targets.
This work offers conceptual roadmaps, technical guidelines, and business-focused models to help solar manufacturers, waste management companies, and project developers implement circular lifecycle strategies. As a review and conceptual framework, it provides early-stage strategic and operational guidance to bridge gaps between research and industry practices, though it does not test specific commercial products.
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While the world is transitioning away from conventional fossil fuel energy systems, recent global reports prove that photovoltaic (PV) energy systems are currently the best renewable alternative. This work presents a comprehensive review of the photovoltaic industry's current linear or unidirectional economy model and proposes a circular economy (CE) model to address sustainability concerns. This work focuses on reviewing, criticizing, and discussing the practical implementations of the 10Rs of sustainability, which aim to achieve both sustainable development goals (SDGs) and global circular economy targets. This work presents multiple comprehensive models with practically informative and conceptually rich structures for the PV's CE from an environmental-, sustainability-, and a business-, deployment and development perspectives. Such models provide the readers with guidelines and technical explanations of the overall goals, pathways/roadmaps, and tools towards solar PV's CE. The work also highlights and verifies important conceptual misunderstandings like the differences between the recycle principle, the dismantling techniques, and the recover principle. The current work bridges the gaps between the PV literature and the PV industry through providing a detailed and practical approach to achieving a successfully sustainable PVs’ CE.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.horiz.2024.100106
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