The International Energy Agency’s Photovoltaic Power Systems Program (IEA-PVPS) has published a comprehensive update to its life cycle inventories (LCIs) report. This LCI report – last published in 2020 – serves as a comprehensive database of the materials, energy use, emissions, and processes involved in manufacturing, operating, and recycling PV systems throughout their entire life cycle.
“What stands out most is how much the silicon supply chain has changed since the previous report, and how directly this shows up in the inventory,” Matthias Stucki from IEA-PVPS’ Task 12 told pv magazine. “The aggregated industry data shows a clear increase in the share of internally recycled silicon in ingot production compared with previous report editions.”
Stucki explained that this concerns a specific, well-defined loop: scrap from the cropping and squaring of monocrystalline ingots retains solar-grade purity and can be reintroduced into crystal growth. “In our inventories this closed-loop recycling is modeled as a dedicated process with its own material and energy inputs,” the contributing author of Report IEA-PVPS T12-33:2026 added.
“What has also substantially improved on the sawing side is the kerf loss in the sawing process: ever thinner diamond wires have further reduced kerf loss, so less silicon is lost per wafer in the first place,” he said. “Taken together with thinner wafers and improved process efficiencies, the environmental impact of the module supply chain has decreased markedly, and the same is true for inverters.”
The report can support researchers, policymakers, industry, and life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners with its detailed datasets. The dataset regarding the monocrystalline silicon supply chain for TOPCon cell technology includes approximately 29% of global polysilicon, 16% of global wafer, 7% of global cell, and 9% of global module production capacity. CdTe data, on the other hand, represent more than 90% of the CdTe module market.
“The most important improvement in the 2026 report is the data basis for the monocrystalline silicon supply chain. It draws on 83 factory-level LCAs collected in the context of the French PV tender process operated by ADEME between 2022 and 2025,” Stucki said. “Compared with previously available public PV LCI datasets, this substantially increases the representativeness of the inventories, which now reflect the technologies actually dominating the market, including TOPCon on n-type wafers and current wafer and module designs.”
Stucki also added that the update includes new country-specific PV mix figures, as well as a new category of data – bottom-up simulated LCIs for advanced monocrystalline silicon manufacturing, which was developed at Fraunhofer ISE.
“The measured industry data describe what the market looks like, but they are aggregated and anonymized, and they always describe the recent past,” he sai. “The simulated LCIs, however, model the entire chain from polysilicon to module bottom-up, with explicit mass and energy balances for more detailed processes, including factory buildings, facility infrastructure, water management and waste treatment.”
From pv magazine Global
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