Enabling the circular economy of solar PV through the 10Rs of sustainability: Critical review, conceptualization, barriers, and role in achieving SDGs

Abstract

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.