I’m struggling a bit here to keep up with the Just Science 2008 effort, so today I am just going to quickly post a recent energy-related article I saw this morning.

This month, U.S. and Dutch researchers published a life-cycle study of various photovoltaic (PV) systems (e.g. various silicon cells as well as CdTe thin films) in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Because PV technologies are really only energy intensive when in production, the study focused on this aspect of the life cycle. As it turns out, CdTe thin-film PV cells emit less greenhouse gases than all of the other PV technologies. However, this difference pales in comparison to other more conventional electricity-generating technologies. The authors claim that if power was supplied by PV only, 89% of the emissions associated with electricity generation would be eliminated.

Hooray solar!

Full reference:
Vasilis et al. (2008) Emissions from Photovoltaic Life Cycles. Environ. Sci. Technol. ASAP article. DOI: 10.1021/es071763q