Life cycle assessments, LCA, can be made on all types of materials and products where the total envi-ronmental impact of the production, use and end-of-life is quantified. By including fire as one potentialend-of-life scenario, the emissions related to these, and potential benefits from reducing the risk of firecan be quantified. The question addressed in this article is how fires in photovoltaic (PV) installations affectthe environmental impact in a life cycle perspective. This will be evaluated by using a methodology calledFire-LCA that is based on standard LCA according to ISO 14040. The total emissions from PV-related firesin buildings and the emissions related to rebuilding and replacing the damaged materials normalised overthe amounts of produced electric energy are calculated to 0.3 g CO2eq /kWh. This is two orders of magni-tude lower than the typical 43.6 g CO2eq /kWh for the normal life cycle of PV installations. This comparisonputs the environmental impact of PV-related fires in perspective and underlines that PV installations stillmake a large positive impact on the reduction of CO2eq -emissions from electricity production even thoughthey represent a certain fire hazard.
The work on this article is funded by the Fire Research and Innovation Centre,FRIC, as a part of the PhD by Reidar Stølen on fire safety of PV installations.FRIC is funded by the partners in addition to funding from the ResearchCouncil of Norway under the program BRANNSIKKERHET [project number294649]. A substantial part of the funding from the Research Council is givenby the Gjensidige Foundation. Further information can be found on fric.no.