Unintended environmental risks of regional PV expansion: A climate-adjusted lifecycle analysis for sustainable...

The exponential growth of photovoltaic (PV) installations in China has positioned end-of-life module management as a critical sustainability challenge. Conventional waste quantification methods overlook region-specific climate impacts on PV degradation, leading to inaccurate waste characterization and inefficient resource allocation. Given that the complex interplay of region-specific climate and PV installations creates unpredictable spatiotemporal variations in PV degradations and wastes, this study employs a climate-adjusted model to estimate regional PV lifespans (ranging from 17 to 50 years), integrated with dynamic material flow analysis and Weibull distribution to project waste generation. Results show that climate-adjusted PV waste projections diverge substantially from static-baseline estimates, with cumulative discrepancies widening over time and deployment scale. An enhanced life cycle assessment further reveals significant regional heterogeneity in environmental impacts, highlighting a 27% underestimation in human toxicity when heavy metal leakage during pre-decommissioning is considered. Future climate projections are further incorporated to evaluate PV degradation under three RCP scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP8.5) from 2025 to 2050. Results reveal a climate change multiplier effect, wherein greater warming accelerates degradation and shortens module lifespans, thereby potentially amplifying future waste volumes and environmental risks without targeted interventions. These insights enable policymakers and industry stakeholders to strategically optimize deployment and capacity of PV and recycling infrastructures. The study provides a data-driven framework for enhancing PV sustainability through integrated management of energy expansion and environmental risk mitigation.