Life-Cycle Assessment of Innovative Industrial Processes for Photovoltaic Production: Process-Level LCIs, Scale-Up Dynamics and Recycling Implications

The rapid commercialization of next-generation photovoltaic (PV) technologies, particularly perovskite, thin-film roll-to-roll (R2R) architectures and tandem devices, necessitates the environmental performance, not only at cell or module level, but also in industrial manufacturing. Existing reviews and life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have compared device-level metrics, e.g., energy payback time and global warming potential, for silicon, cadmium telluride (CdTe), copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) and perovskite technologies. Most syntheses yet remain limited to cradle-to-grave outcomes at technology level and rely heavily on aggregated inventory databases. They do not systematically compile or harmonize process-level life-cycle inventories (LCIs) for manufacturing steps that distinguish the industrial routes that include R2R coating, solution deposition, atomic layer deposition, low-temperature processing and novel encapsulation-metallization methods. These LCIs assess essentially how environmental impacts evolve across scale-up stages (lab-pilot-industrial), evaluating trade-offs in manufacturing, recyclability and critical material recovery, simultaneously providing standardized LCI templates for future studies. Motivated by gaps in inventory detail and methodological quince for emergent PV processes, this review: (1) compiles and critically analyses process-level LCIs for innovative PV manufacturing routes; (2) quantifies sensitivity to scale, yield, and energy mix; (3) proposes standardized methodological rules and open-access LCI templates to improve comparability, reproducibility, and techno-environmental modelling.