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Congrès International sur l’Analyse du Cycle de Vie Lille, Novembre 2011
times stronger. The impact categories in which this has the greatest influence are the impact of climate
change on human health, the fossil depletion, the photochemical oxidant formation and the terrestrial
acidification. The allocation rules used also have an important effect.
The sensibility check on the method shows that even when a Midpoint method is used for the
analysis, the results are the same, which shows the robustness of the method.
The Energy PayBack Time has also been calculated. It varies between 5 and 11 years according
to the origin of the electricity grid chosen for the production of the panels. In any case, it is smaller than the
life span of the panels, i.e. 30 years, which explains the environmental interest of photovoltaics.
The uncertainty analysis used values from the SimpaPro software. The uncertainties are mainly
very high in the categories of freshwater eutrophication (240 %), freshwater ecotoxicity (190 %), marine
ecotoxicity (180 %) and terrestrial ecotoxicity (140 %). In the other categories, the uncertainties are close
to 110 %.
Finally, the electricity produced from photovoltaics is compared with the electricity from the grid,
from an environmental point of view. However, this comparison does not take into account the
intermittence of the electrical production from photovoltaics. In the case of Belgian or German electricity
mix, the use of photovoltaic modules allows a reduction of the environmental impact mainly in fossils
depletion, impact of climate change on human health and particulate matter formation. However, Swiss
electricity has a smaller environmental impact than the photovoltaic electricity. This comparison was done
with the Unique Score. Despite the high uncertainties, this ranking does not change. Nevertheless, since
the European grid is extremely interlinked, the use of photovoltaic modules seems favourable from an
environmental point of view.
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