Global warming represents a major subject on all society levels including governments, economic actors and citizens. The textile industry is often considered a polluting activity. In this project, French textile manufacturers sought to quantify the carbon footprint (CF) of sold clothes and household linen using Life Cycle Assessment in France for the purpose of reducing it to meet the constraints of Paris Agreement by 2050. First, manufacturers calculated the carbon footprint of 17 clothes and household linen products and established alternative scenarios for four production routes. Secondly, they modeled the supply of the upstream sector through different countries. Based on imports of textile products, their calculated CF for one French person reaches 442 kg of CO₂eq/year. Means of action to reduce this carbon footprint by a factor of 6 (74 kg of CO₂eq/person/year for textiles) are calculated and are the following: installing the most energy-intensive production processes in a country with a low carbon electricity mix, avoiding unsold goods, implementing eco-design approaches and enhancing the value of end-of-life products with reuse or recycling. Therefore, CF for textiles per capita is reduced to 43 kg CO₂eq/year which goes beyond the objectives of Paris Agreement and facilitates carbon neutrality in the textile sector. The first priority for reducing the French carbon footprint of clothes and household linen would be to locate textile production in countries with (i) low carbon electricity, (ii) to reduce unsold items, and (iii) to elaborate ecodesign of product including circular economy.

Worldwide electricity consumption increases by 2.6% each year. Greenhouse gas emissions due to electricity production raise by 2.1% per year on average. The development of efficient low-carbon-footprint renewable energy systems is urgently needed. CPVMatch investigates the feasibility of mirror or lens-based High Concentration Photovoltaic (HCPV) systems. Thanks to innovative four junction solar cells, new glass coatings, Position Sensitive Detectors (PSD), and DC/DC converters, it is possible to reach concentration levels higher than 800× and a module efficiency between 36.7% and 41.6%. From a circular economy’s standpoint, the use of concentration technologies lowers the need in active material, increases recyclability, and reduces the risk of material contamination. By using the Life Cycle Assessment method, it is demonstrated that HCPV presents a carbon footprint ranking between 16.4 and 18.4 g CO₂-eq/kWh. A comparison with other energy means for 16 impact categories including primary energy demand and particle emissions points out that the environmental footprint of HCPV is typically 50 to 100 times lower than fossil fuels footprint. HCPV’s footprint is also three times lower than that of crystalline photovoltaic solutions and is close to the environmental performance of wind power and hydropower.