Photovoltaic (PV) systems are regarded as clean and sustainable sources of energy. Although the operation of PV systems exhibits minimal pollution during their lifetime, the probable environmental impacts of such systems from manufacturing until disposal cannot be ignored. The production of hazardous contaminates, water resources pollution, and emi. ••PV systems cannot be regarded as completely eco-friendly systems with zero-emissions.••The adverse environmental impacts of PV systems include land, water, pollution, Hazardous materials, noise, and visual.••Future design trends of PV systems focus on improved design, sustainability, and recycling.••Incentives and research to close the gaps can offer a great platform for future legislations.Environmental impactsPhotovoltaic systemsGreenhouse gas emissionsLand useWater usageHazardous materialsThe continuous increase of the world's population placed heavy demands on food, water, and energy sectors (Sarkodie and Owusu, 2020; Rasul, 2016; Gulied et al., 2019). The energy generation processes are facing major challenges such as sustainability, cost, security, and market price fluctuations (Ebhota and Jen, 2020; Almomani, 2020). In addition, the increase in environmental awareness and the application of more stringent discharge regulations has directed the scientific community to work on developing alternative, sustainable, and renewable energy sources (Shah, 2020; Ahmad et al., 2020; Alizadeh et al., 2020). With such implications, the transformation of energy systems has also received lots of attention ranging from more focus on biofuels and solar cells (Mohammed et al., 2019; Zhu et al., 2015; Alami et al., 2018). Hybrid and sustainable energy systems such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass are considered as the key technologies in the renewable revolution phase (Kommalapati et al., 2017; Tawalbeh et al., 2020; Almomani and Bhosale, 2020). Fig. 1 shows that the global electricity generation in 2017 is coming from oil, natural gas, and coal. The data in Fig. 1 confirms that the contribution of renewable energy resources to the global energy demand is very limited compared to coal and gas (https://, n.d.; Khordehgah et al., 2020).Among. Land patterns and proper distribution is important to efficiently utilize it for PV systems and avoid competition with other important activities such as agriculture. According to Dias et al. (2019), the land prioritization for agricultural activities has decreased the amount of solar energy harvested to a great extend (from 2494 to 1116 MW). An interesting evaluating parameter is to determine the energy land-use intensity for all renewable energy technologies and compare them based on the environmental and local economic effects. Several reports and studies showed that solar power systems (PV and Concentrated solar power (CSP)) have the highest energy land-use intensity compared to other energy technologies (Pearlmutter et al., 2020; Pimentel Da Silva and Branco, 2018; Denholm and Margolis, 2008). Cagle et al. (Almomani and Bhosale, 2020) reported that the fast growth of solar systems will acquire thousands of acres in the U.S alone (Cagle et al., 2019). Kafka and Miller (2020) proposed a novel method in order to reduce land use by introducing a dual-angle solar harvest system a two tilt angle solar array. The same study showed that increasing the PV capacity requires less land. For example, the 10 MW power that would normally require 1154 PV panels' installations were reduced to 104 with 30 MW power. Another way to avoid the conflict with agriculture land is by installing renewable technologies in degraded areas as Shiraishi et al. (2019) reported.
