Reverse Manufacturing Enables Perovskite Photovoltaics to Reach the Carbon Footprint Limit of a Glass Substrate

Summary Although it still contributes to less than 2% of the worldwide electricity generation, photovoltaics (PVs) is on the way to becoming a key energy technology for a global future renewable energy infrastructure. We present projections of worldwide CO2 emissions of the future PV industry, finding that these emissions will likely surpass those caused by the global shipping or aviation sector. As an alternative, we propose a fully printed PV reverse manufacturing concept that minimizes the carbon footprint to the ultimate lower limit of the glass substrate fabrication. This so called “in situ” approach is based on a perovskite absorber that is highly durable and encapsulated with glass solder between float glass substrates, reducing the CO2-footprint of conventional PV modules by 1/20th. Yielding a certified stabilized efficiency of 9.3%, this record efficiency for glass-solder-encapsulated perovskite PV paves the way for future solar cells with the lowest carbon footprints.