Economically sustainable scaling of photovoltaics to meet climate targets
Name
Economically sustainable scaling.pdf
Size
2.29 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
e5fd87223e2f80df7656ef9adf62e4f6
Author(s)
Wilson, Gregory
Needleman, David Berney
Poindexter, Jeremy Roger
Kurchin, Rachel Chava
Peters, Ian Marius
Buonassisi, Anthony
Date Issued
April 2016
Journal
Energy and Environmental Science
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Citation
Needleman, David Berney, Jeremy R. Poindexter, Rachel C. Kurchin, I. Marius Peters, Gregory Wilson, and Tonio Buonassisi. “Economically Sustainable Scaling of Photovoltaics to Meet Climate Targets.” Energy Environ. Sci. 9, no. 6 (2016): 2122–2129. © 2016 The Royal Society of Chemistry
Version
Final published version
Abstract
To meet climate targets, power generation capacity from photovoltaics (PV) in 2030 will have to be much greater than is predicted from either steady state growth using today's manufacturing capacity or industry roadmaps. Analysis of whether current technology can scale, in an economically sustainable way, to sufficient levels to meet these targets has not yet been undertaken, nor have tools to perform this analysis been presented. Here, we use bottom-up cost modeling to predict cumulative capacity as a function of technological and economic variables. We find that today’s technology falls short in two ways: profits are too small relative to upfront factory costs to grow manufacturing capacity rapidly enough to meet climate targets, and costs are too high to generate enough demand to meet climate targets. We show that decreasing the capital intensity (capex) of PV manufacturing to increase manufacturing capacity and effectively reducing cost (e.g., through higher efficiency) to increase demand are the most effective and least risky ways to address these barriers to scale. We also assess the effects of variations in demand due to hard-to-predict factors, like public policy, on the necessary reductions in cost. Finally, we review examples of redundant technology pathways for crystalline silicon PV to achieve the necessary innovations in capex, performance, and price.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Photovoltaic Research Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1039/C6EE00484A
