Economics and environmental impacts of solar energy technologies

The growing interest in being environmentally conscious and enabling sustainability had prompted an increasing number of developed countries to support public and private financing of renewable energy (RE) projects. Also, the abundant availability of renewable resources and cost-effective energy conversion technology favored this growth. Among the RE sources, solar energy technologies (SETs) are the fastest-growing and deliver a promising solution to combat climate change. The SETs include solar photovoltaics and solar thermal collectors, mainly used for power generation, heating, and cooling applications to provide significant economic and environmental benefits, contributing to the long-term evolution. The SETs are revolutionary energy conversion systems that can intensely reduce carbon emissions, cost of energy and improve energy efficiency. The SETs find a vital role in many applications spreading from rooftop buildings to agricultural farms. Depending upon the applications, their performance, economics, and associated environmental impacts will vary. Hence, this chapter aims at providing different types of SETs that could be potentially used in the agriculture and food sectors. In addition, this chapter also provides the methods and tools to evaluate the economics and environmental impacts for different SETs.