Life Cycle Assessment of Large-Scale Solar Photovoltaic Plant based in Malaysia

Abstract

A cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) has been performed on a Large Scale Solar Photovoltaic (LSSPV) plant based in Peninsular Malaysia to study the detailed environmental impact of its life cycle. The LSSPV, with a capacity of 78 MWdc, is currently one of Malaysia’s largest solar power plants. The different life cycle phases of the LSSPV, starting from resource manufacturing and transportation, through plant construction and electricity generation, and to decommissioning of the plant, were assessed using the SimaPro software with the Ecoinvent v3.8 database. Results show that the overall emission rate for the LSSPV is 0.0309 kgCO2eq/kWh. It is estimated that the construction phase of the power plant, which includes activities such as infrastructure works and production of PV modules and Balance of System, yields the largest amount of kgCO2eq/kWh emission at 85.7% and imposes the highest environmental impact as compared to the other phases. The second biggest contributor is attributed to the transportation phase, contributing to 14.0% of the total kgCO2eq/kWh emission, of which most of the emission is emitted during the sea freight transportation of PV components from China port to Malaysia port (12.4%). A sensitivity analysis was performed to compare the environmental impact between open ground installation and the slanted roof installation mounting system of LSSPV. The findings from LCA proposed that open-ground installation has a greater negative impact on the environment because it involves additional land clearing and infrastructure transformation. The findings from this study serve as a benchmark for the LSSPV system in Malaysia and present technical perspectives for the future development of PV projects considering environmental impacts across the project lifetime.