Life cycle costing as a bottom line for the life cycle sustainability assessment in the solar energy sector: A review

Abstract This review focus on LCC Assessment (LCCA) and the adoption of this methodology for the economic pillar evaluation of the Sustainability Life Cycle in the Solar Energy sector. Research showed the effectiveness of this methodology as the main component for assessing sustainability in the economic domain, and the relationship with the primary methods of environmental and social areas. The energy industry has been responsible for a significant number of publications, and the use of LCCA for different scale solar energy solutions as vehicles, houses, buildings, highways, rural properties and power plants indicates the usefulness of this methodology. In the large-scale solar energy solutions, for Solar Photo Voltaic (SPV) and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), the use of LCCA can upraise the advantages for choosing or integrating both solutions. Also clarifying the feasibility of their critical ancillary solutions, named Electrical Energy Storages (EES) and the Thermal Energy Storages (TES). In minor scale solar energy solutions where the crescent technological evolution of SPV Cells has resulted in higher energy efficiency rates, the use of the LCCA can demonstrate the sensitive reduction on the Levelled Cost of Energy (LCOE), reflecting on the feasibility of solutions as the Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB). These facts allied to the crescent number of studies and publications shows that LCCA is a promising field of studies and a powerful tool to achieve a most complete and reliable Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment of solar energy technologies and also the solar energy implementation projects, mainly in the design phase.