Considering the Environmental Consequences of the Evolution of the Risk of Extreme Natural Events on a PV Installation: a Morphological Analysis-based Prospective Method Applied to Life Cycle Assessment

Photovoltaic (PV) systems play an essential role in the decarbonization of the energy sector, but they face challenges related to the increased frequency and intensity of natural hazards. Such hazards may damage PV systems, have undesired consequences on their performance, and have non-negligible additional environmental impacts due to the material and energy flows related to potential repair and replacement activities. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been used to estimate the potential environmental impacts of PV systems, but its conventional application does not consider the influence of evolving natural hazards. This work aims to present a method that guides the definition of scenarios that support the description of potential impacts of evolving natural hazards in the environmental performance of a PV power plant. The proposed method uses the General Morphological Analysis approach to develop scenarios. The method is called the Disaster Risk-gUided scenarIo Definition (DRUID) method as a Life Cycle Inventory module. Its main output is a comparative environmental impacts study that is potentially useful as a decisionsupport element for PV plant projects. Preliminary results from an illustrative case study in France aimed to test the LCA model suggest significant differences between environmental impact results obtained from the baseline LCA scenario and LCA DRUID-based scenarios. The DRUID method could become a relevant decision-support tool that could be applied to compare potential environmental impacts between energy production systems whose vulnerability to natural hazards is higher than that of PV systems.