Without immediate and decisive action, global temperatures will likely increase to levels that severely degrade living conditions for humans, animals, and plants on our planet [1]. There is thus a wide consensus that global warming by the end of the century should be limited to not more than +1.5∘C above pre-industrial levels, which implies a rapid reduction of CO2 emissions to net zero by 2050 and thus an equally rapid transition towards a mostly renewable energy supply [2]. As the major sources of renewable energy—solar photovoltaics and wind—are electric, power electronics is a key enabling technology for the energy transition and for the electrification of the mobility sector [3], [4]. Improvements in power electronics have been contributing to sustainability for decades: Increasing the power conversion efficiency saves energy in the use phase, and increasing the gravimetric and volumetric power densities saves material and, in mobile applications, also contributes to use-phase energy savings.
However, the necessary energy and mobility transitions imply a vast increase in the installed base of power converters, which raises questions regarding raw material usage and availability [5], especially of critical minerals with potentially geopolitically constrained sourcing, and also regarding the prevention of these converter systems ending up as electronic waste after a typical lifetime of around 20 years [2]. Therefore, and in parallel to policy and standardization activities, e.g., regarding material efficiency [6], recently more and more research addresses the environmental aspects of power electronics [7], [8], [9], e.g., through life cycle assessments (LCA) [10], [11], [12], design methods considering environmental compatibility [11], [13], [14], and the compatibility with a future circular economy [2], [6], [15]. Note that environmental LCA considers several impact categories (e.g., water scarcity, human toxicity, and resource depletion), but in the present article, the focus is on global warming potential (CO2-equivalent emissions) due to its high policy relevance and data availability.
At the Future of Electronic Power Processing and Conversion Workshop (FEPPCON XII) held in Geneva, Switzerland, in September 2024, thus, a session on “Sustainable Power Electronics Technology” with three invited presentations was organized. The first presentation by Prof. Christine Minke (TU Clausthal, Germany) and Prof. Regine Mallwitz (TU Braunschweig, Germany) addressed the recycling of electric vehicles and the circular economy of power electronics. Then, Dr. Piotr Dworakowski (SuperGrid Institute, France) presented an LCA of a DC solid-state transformer (DCSST) for future DC networks, before Dr. Jonas Huber (ETH Zürich, Switzerland) discussed environmental compatibility as a new performance indicator in the multiobjective optimization of power electronic converters and gave an overview on various aspects of circular economy compatible power electronics. This article summarizes the key messages of the three presentations and of the ensuing discussion among the workshop participants.
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