Presently, the world is going through a euphoric rush to install photovoltaic (PV) devices in deserts, over water bodies, on rooftops of houses, vehicles, and parking spaces, and many other applications. The cumulative PV installation is estimated to have crossed 600 GW globally to date and is expected to cross 4500 GW by 2050 due to sustained investment and continual innovation in technology, project financing, and execution. This article presents a cr. Presently, the world is going through a euphoric rush to install photovoltaic (PV) devices in deserts, over water bodies, on rooftops of houses, vehicles, and parking spaces, and many other applications. The cumulative PV installation is estimated to have crossed 600 GW globally to date and is expected to cross 4500 GW by 2050 due to sustained investment and continual innovation in technology, project financing, and execution. This article presents a critical and comprehensive review of the wide spectrum of present and future PV technologies, not only in terms of their performance but also in terms of the aspects of their end-of-life waste management and ecotoxicity, which have been largely neglected by the researchers and policymakers. The global status of the regulatory framework is reviewed as well, with regard to the life cycle management of PV waste. And It is found that presently, the world is very poorly equipped with regulatory frameworks to deal with massive PV waste (about 78 million tonnes), expected to be generated by 2050. Based on the findings, an immediate and disruptive paradigm shift is proposed in the policy framework, from the promotion of new PV installation to life cycle management of PV assets.••End-of-Life wastePhotovoltaic technologyPolicy paradigmRecycle and reuseThe world is under siege by the imminent threat from global warming. Despite isolated efforts taken by individual nations so far, the global average temperature continues to rise. Despite all the efforts, in the last 22 years, the world has witnessed the 20 warmest years, and the previous four years are the hottest ones in the history of modern civilization. The global average temperature has increased from 0.86 °C above the pre-industrial baseline during 2006–2015 to 1.04 °C above the baseline temperature in the last five years. To deal with this ever-aggravating global warming scenario, the world has embraced renewable energy technologies. And through the collective and individual initiatives by the global community, investment in new renewables continued to increase, despite regressive China's 531 Policy (curtailed subsidies for the solar industry), and Section 201 ruling of USA (applied 25% import tariff). And in 2018, the total investment in new renewables reached USD 288.9 billion globally, compared to USD 265 billion in 2017. Presently, the renewable energy investment in the developing world, excluding China, increased to a record high of USD 61.6 billion.As a result of sustained investment and continual innovation in technology, project financing, and execution, over 100 MW of new photovoltaic (PV) installation is being added to global installed capacity every day since 2013. The PV effect, i.e., the phenomenon in which the electrical potential is developed across the junction between two photoresponsive materials upon being irradiated with photons, was first demonstrated by a French physicist, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel, in 1839. Over the following century, scientists and researchers around the world started exploring different photoresponsive materials viz. selenium, platinum, cadmium, and germanium for the generation of electricity. However, until the middle of the 20th century, work related to photoelectricity remained confined to laboratories only, as the efficiency did not increase high enough for practical applications.In 1954, three papers were published, almost simultaneously, by Bell telephone laboratories in New Jersey, RCA laboratories in Princeton, and US Air Force Aerospace Research Laboratory in Ohio in the American Physical Society journals, which set a new era of research in the field of PVs. In all three papers, the semiconductor p-n junction devices' capability was demonstrated in converting the energy of incident radiation into electricity, with a quantum leap in efficiency from what was achieved in the previous century. Within four years of reaching this historical stage, in 1958, single crystalline silicon (s-Si) based PV cells were deployed in their maiden application to power transmitters of the satellite-Vanguard 1 in space. Through continual innovation in PV t. Conventionally, commercial production of PV energy has been centered around crystalline silicon and thin-film technologies (e.g., Cadmium telluride (CdTe) and Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS)). However, more recently, a large number of emerging PV technologies are being pursued by researchers and industries for creating better options in terms of efficiency, recyclability, consumption of energy and resources during production, and ecotoxicities, such as dye-sensitizers, carbon nanotubes, organic polymers, inorganic materials (e.g., Cu2ZnSnS4 or CZTS), and inorganic–organic hybrid materials (e.g., perovskites). The detailed list of technologies and their best efficiency achieved on a laboratory scale is presented in Table 1. As evident from Table 1, the present efficiency level achieved for the emerging technologies are far lower than that of crystalline and thin-film technologies; hence the present market share of those are < 1%; however, these technologies are scalable at a faster rate than the crystalline PV technologies and hence expected to dominate the market share in the future.Table 1. Reported peak efficiency of the PV technologies,, –.
