With the package “Fit for 55” the European Commission proposed a wide range of regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions to 55% of their 1990 levels by 2030.
The package, which is currently being discussed, lays out an in-depth amendment of the EU policies related to climate, energy, transport, taxation, and is positioned within the framework of the Green New Deal, the European agreement for ecological transition, recipient of one third of the €1.8 trillion in investments for the NextGenerationEU recovery plan, in addition to the resources provided by the EU seven-year budget.
The unprecedented scope of the investments and the strategic scale of the objective require to carry out an honest reflection, backed by a thorough scientific and technical analysis and by reliable data, which represent the ground on which the legislator is building the path towards the ecological transition.
All energy sources generate a carbon footprint, meaning they release greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In the case of fossil fuels, most of the emissions are generated by the combustion of fuels.
In the case of renewable energy sources, however, most emissions are produced by the industrial process needed to manufacture turbines, panels, wires, inverters, support structures, etc.
In 2015, when the Paris agreement was signed in order to fight climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, A.R.5) estimated the median carbon intensity of solar energy at 40 gCO2/kWh: less than a tenth compared to a thermal power plant fuelled by natural gas.
Hence, in many countries solar energy has become the cornerstone of the strategy of decarbonisation.
Yet, however seemingly accurate and impeccable, those estimates are flawed by macroscopic methodological errors.
The most evident concerns the criteria used to estimate a solar plant's carbon footprint (see ANNEX I for estimates and sources).
The IPCC set out reference values starting from a single review of thirteen scientific studies. Almost nine of these studies estimate the emissions of industrial processes related to the production of a solar plant starting from an energy mix whose carbon intensity is similar to that of Finland or Denmark (mostly hydroelectric energy, natural gas and waste heat).
Furthermore, although they predicted the use of natural gas, none of the reviewed studies included methane emissions generated by the production and transport of fuel, that are instead featured by the reference method.
These inconsistencies portray a distorted view of photovoltaic energy's carbon intensity, since three quarters of solar panels on the market are produced in China starting from an energy mix dominated by coal. A fossil fuel that, among other things, involves substantial methane emissions during extraction.
As unbelievable as they already might appear, these estimates are extremely cautious.
Alongside these macroscopic although easily rectifiable errors, in fact, there are many others just as stunning, but harder to correct due to the lack of sources in scientific literature (see ANNEX III for estimates and sources).
One example.
Each of the sources taken into account by the review provides that all raw materials involved in the production process – from quartz, from which silicon is made, to chalcopyrite, used to obtain brass - are extracted in the same place where they are later transformed into metals, crafted and assembled into panels. Indeed, only two studies out of thirteen take into account the problem posed by transporting panels from the factory to the place where they are installed. In the context of a globalised economy, this means erasing thousands of miles of transports and returns for each ton of finished product.
Overall, by amending the calculation method, carbon intensity of a made in China solar plant installed in an average insulation context (1.200 equivalent hours per year) can even exceed 500 gCO2/kWh.
After eight years, a few weeks ago the IPCC released its new assessment report (A.R.6) which, instead of amending the egregious methodological errors affecting its previous estimates, incorporated them, thus contributing to settle them in scientific literature.
The new report, in fact, doesn't provide any new reference values (explicitly referring to those featured in the previous report) although it takes into account the technological and production advancement undergone by the industry in the past eight years.
Out of the four studies adopted as sources, however, two lower the estimates featured in the A.R.5 by increasing the equivalent hours in which the panels are operational in a climate context similar to the sunny areas of Sicily (albeit leaving unchanged the energy mix used to calculate the plant's carbon footprint), while another goes so far as to analyse the lyfe-cycle of a type of panel which is not on the market.
While the approval of Fit for 55 is nearing, it is of the utmost importance to bring this egregious distortion to the attention of decision makers and the public opinion.
European climate and energy policies cannot be based on “ideal” data, conceived to be formally unobjectionable while, at the same time, utterly straying from reality.
It is essential to bring back accurate, in-depth, factual, evidence-based and neutral analyses of the data at our disposal to the centre of policy decision-making. Otherwise the European Union will suffer ecological transition instead of controlling it, with all that entails on a strategic, economic, social and political level.
In a time of widespread crisis, brought forth first by the pandemic and then by the Russian war in Ukraine, we therefore call for the European Union to make its decisions based upon methodologically robust scientific evidence, consistent with reality rather than based on hypothetical and futuristic scenarios, in order for the ecological transition to move forward accordingly with social and generational justice, protecting the strategic independence of the EU and revitalising the competitiveness of the European industry.