Applied Chemical Engineering

Application chemistry-enabled precise allocation of carbon emission rights in the solar energy industry: Policy pathways and practical implementation models

Dandan Xie

School of Business, University of Connecticut, 2100 Hillside Road, Unit 1041, Storrs, CT 06269-1041, USA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59429/ace.v9i3.6108

Keywords: application chemistry; photovoltaic industry; carbon emission rights; lifecycle carbon accounting; policy framework; carbon market design

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Abstract

The solar photovoltaic (PV) industry has been added to the decarbonisation plans for the world, but the manufacturing in its upper parts is still relatively high-carbon and difficult to quantify accurately. The present system of carbon emission allocation uses a single average emission factor or a historical intensity benchmark, thus failing to account for process and material-specific differences in reaction pathways. Application chemistry covers studies of reaction mechanisms, characterisation of new materials and high-throughput screening experiments to address the above deficiencies. Introduce a multi-scale framework in this paper to integrate molecular-level carbon tracing, process-level dynamic accounting and product-level carbon quota mapping to ensure the accuracy of carbon emission permit allocation for the solar energy industry. Three feasible policy-practice models for silicon production, photovoltaic cell fabrication and industrial chain integration have also been proposed. Based on the above analysis, it has been found that chemistry-informed carbon accounting can improve the accuracy of allocation and provide a direction for mechanism-driven design of the carbon market.

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