Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition Releases Fifth Annual Solar Scorecard

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The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) has released its 2014 Solar Scorecard, which ranks manufacturers of solar photovoltaic modules according to a range of environmental, sustainability and social factors.

Seven PV companies responded in detail to this fifth annual SVTC survey, representing 25.2% of the total module market share. The remainder of the information used to compile the scorecard was gathered from publicly available documentation. The PV manufacturers included in the 2014 Solar Scorecard represent approximately 75% of the industry.

SVTC recognized two companies – SolarWorld and Yingli – for responding to the Solar Scorecard survey every year since 2010. In addition to this recognition, SolarWorld has achieved the highest overall score across all five Solar Scorecards to date.

Trina (92), SunPower (88) and Yingli (81) earned the top scores in 2014. SolarWorld (73) and REC (71) remain among the top tier of industry environmental leaders, by SVTC's reckoning. Ten PV manufacturers of the 37 scored by SVTC post annual hazardous chemical reduction targets on their websites or in sustainability reports.

‘It's critically important for companies to collect and report chemical use and emissions data,’ says Dustin Mulvaney, an assistant professor at San Jose State University and SVTC's science advisor. ‘The more transparency there is on this issue, the more likely it is that companies will be able to compete to reduce their emissions per PV module.’

The full results of the 2014 Solar Scorecard can be found here.

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