Objective: Demonstrate that the PV industry may deliver high quality products and is also willing to take greater responsibility for common good.

• Quality concept: this refers to the implementation of a quality strategy all along the value chain of the sector from the production of wafers and cells until commercialisation, maintenance and even recycling of modules. This strategy aims at improving relationships during the production process in order to improve quality of products and propose tailor-made solutions for the industry.
  
  
• Standardisation & Certification: since many years, EPIA is working on improving and accelerating the existing standardisation process to better adapt to the needs of a rapidly growing and innovating industry. In January 2007, it was decided that among the different organisations involved in standardisation, the process will be organised as follows:
  
  
  • For compulsory safety standards, IEC and CENELEC will remain the main entities producing standards
  • For quality and performance standards, the industry will produce them either by itself or in collaboration with SEMI. (SEMI has a well established standardisation process in the semiconductor sector and is willing to collaborate with the PV sector to establish similar procedures)
• Waste and Recycling:
  
  
  • PV Cycle initiative: this initiative has been jointly proposed in 2006 by EPIA and BSW (German solar industry association). The objective was to work out  and, if applicable, establish a take back and recycling concept for PV and to gather and publish actual environmental PV data. At the end of 2006, it was decided that an assessment to identify the best solution that should be implemented for waste  treatment should be carried out. According to the results which are available since July 2008, it has proposed several options to the industry in order to decide how waste should be treated. Due to a series of meetings and workshops together with manufacturers, the association PV Cycle was created on 5th July 2007. Its aim is to promote protection of the climate and the environment by encouraging increased use and sustainability of PV technology.   More information:                           www.pvcycle.org                                                                          

  

• IEA-PVPS, Task 12 on Environment, Health and Safety issues. EPIA together with the US National Research Energy Laboratory, as co-leaders, have defined the action plan of this new task which runs from 2007 until 2011. The objective is to foster international collaboration in the areas of safety and sustainability which are crucial for allowing PV to grow to levels enabling a major contribution in the needs of the member countries and the world. In addition, a proposal for funding to finance the work of the task has been submitted within the frame of the FP7, in collaboration with the University of Utrecht and ECN. More information: www.iea-pvps.org