The End-of-Life of Perovskite PV

Rapid increase in the deployment of photovoltaic installations since the beginning of the century has led to the global capacity exceeding 220GW today. Projections foreseeing growing solar panel deployment rates show that photovoltaic installations will be an important asset in developing a more sustainable world economy. Yet, increasing deployment rates will lead to large volumes of waste photovoltaic modules in the future and large volumes of decommissioned panels can be expected by the middle of this century. Efficient end-of-life treatments will be needed to recover valuable components. Perovskite solar cells were first reported half a decade ago and improvements in efficiency of laboratory scale devices have been achieved at an unprecedented pace. This Perspective discusses some important environmental, regulatory, and practical aspects potentially arising at the end of life of decommissioned perovskite solar cells. With increasing PV deployment rates, resulting waste volumes can be foreseen with a 20- to 30-year lag.