Environmental life cycle inventory of crystalline silicon photovoltaic module production

Together with 11 European and US photovoltaic companies an extensive effort has been made to collect Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data that represents the status of production technology for crystalline silicon modules for the year 2004. These data can be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of photovoltaic solar energy systems. The new data covers all processes from silicon feedstock production via wafer- and cell- to module manufacturing. All commercial wafer technologies are covered, i.e multi- and monocrystalline wafers as well as ribbon technologies. For monocrystalline silicon wafer production further improvement of the data quality is recommended.