Over the past five years, it has become more common to see solar panels covering a field or shining on a nearby rooftop. The industry has grown at an average annual rate of 33% over the past 10 years, and solar installations have nearly doubled over the past five years.
That growth is sure to accelerate thanks to a major financial boost from the federal climate bill, which will allocate $30 trillion to renewable energy over the next decade.
But what will happen when these solar panels reach the end of their useful life in 25-30 years? Interest in panel recycling has grown as solar installations have grown, but experts say the solar panel assembly and disassembly industry is in its infancy and not evenly distributed. in the United States, nor reuse and repair options, the most sustainable circular economy strategies. they are even less accessible.
Making solar panel recycling more common will take a combination of technological advances, economic incentives, and smart policies at the state and federal levels. And more importantly, experts say, the work behind the scenes should lead to a simple, one-stop solution for solar panel designers and owners, many of whom don't think much about panel recycling today.
"Let's not make it difficult or people will recycle less," said Evelyn Butler, vice president of technical services for the Solar Energy Industries Association, a nonprofit trade association.
simple economyAccording to those interviewed for this article, the resources of the US solar panel recycling market have not grown significantly in recent years.
"There's been quite a bit of activity, but I would say it's still very slow in terms of overall growth," Butler said.
Garvin Heath, a senior researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), said several companies, including First Solar, Cascade Eco Minerals and Solar Cycle, offer end-of-life services to solar developers, but demand is still insufficient. for service: to encourage future growth.
Removing the panel and recycling the raw material costs more than the cost of the raw material.
Until economies of scale kick in, solar recycling remains a low-margin business that doesn't justify investing in new technologies, some of which are available but not yet commercially deployed, Heath said.
"The reason you don't see more companies recycling solar panels is because the economy doesn't make sense," said AJ Orben, vice president of business-focused We Recycle Solar. "Removing the panel and recycling the raw material costs more than the raw material."
In fact, Orben's business derives most of its revenue from environmental consulting and other services; Corporate recycling is a waste of money.
With the panels it receives, We Recycle Solar separates the glass from the metals, sends the metals to recycling plants, and grinds the glass before sending it to the recycling plant. The semiconductors are melted down and used in future solar energy applications, Orben said.
Heath said it was pretty common. metal and glass are the two most common materials recycled from solar cells, and smaller items such as silicon solar cells rarely see secondary use. After all, most recycling companies are only interested in one material, Butler said, which means even recyclers who accept solar panels can extract the raw material before sending the panel to another. company.
Laws and disclaimers
There is a significant regulatory barrier to harnessing the potential of solar energy. In most of the United States, solar panels are classified as hazardous waste. This severely limits the number of processors ready to accept solar cells due to strict standards and testing requirements.
Two years ago, the state of California reclassified solar panels as “general waste,” which also includes batteries and light bulbs. Orben said this allows more waste handlers already licensed for universal waste to accept solar panels. Ultimately, they can keep the panels and send them to a higher-quality recycler, but Orben said that creates more opportunities for the panels to be diverted from landfills.
Heath said NREL focuses some of its research power on policy issues. On the one hand, it seeks new rules for the classification of waste. But Heath said he also wanted to develop standards for panel reuse and recovery, especially in networked applications.
"It's a much bigger market for used solar modules than off-grid," Heath said, referring to the use of DIY panels in homes, portable or otherwise. “There is only one “van” to put the PV modules.
In other words, creating safety standards for retrofitted panels could give them a second life in large solar projects. "He needs more attention," Heath said.
a rude awakeningThen, of course, there's the problem that most solar homeowners and developers aren't fully aware of the dead-end options for operating panels.
Orben says a common misconception is that owners of solar installations will compare solar retrofit costs to landfill costs, which is a false choice.
"When people compare costs, they're not comparing apples to apples," Orben said, because in many places it's illegal to throw away signs (again, thanks to sorting trash). . ) "It's actually the treatment costs that they have to compare with, say, hazardous waste treatment, which is considerably more expensive."
Heath and Butler agree that the public also needs to better understand the alternatives to not recycling: reuse and recovery.
“Recycling has received the most attention as part of the circular economy. Recycling is not the only circular economy strategy,” Heath said.
Enel North America, a renewable energy company with a global presence, is a solar developer focusing on some of these out-of-the-box strategies.
What we want to do is extend the life of the assets as much as possible. Just because a photovoltaic panel lacks useful quality performance does not mean that it cannot be used in industrial or commercial applications.
“What we want to do is extend the useful life of assets as much as possible,” said Peter Perrault, company director and head of circular economy. "Just because a photovoltaic panel does not have useful efficiency does not mean that it cannot be used in an industrial or commercial application... We always want to extend the life of these materials even before think about recycling.
However, most of Enel's facilities in North America are far from this point; the oldest was published in 2012. But Perot said Enel prefers panel maintenance that extends useful life and secondary applications. The company sees this as a key element of its three-pronged sustainability strategy.
In fact, there are clear environmental and economic benefits to extending the life of panels rather than throwing them away and making new ones. Heath has studied it, but says more attention is needed in this area, especially to make new technologies commercially viable. Such technology could allow manufacturers to use crystalline silicon components in panels, Heath said.
“The development of technologies alone does not guarantee that these technologies will be accepted in the market, and it is only when they are accepted in the market that we will have better results,” he said. "We can't invent the technology, we have to make sure they have the right economics." (And not just economically, this technology also needs the right policy environment to succeed.)
The economics of recovering or reusing solar energy will likely come as a nasty surprise to many solar plant owners, Orben said, because most don't provide any type of end-of-life service.
He's confident that processors like his business can grow as demand for the service increases, but he's not so sure the public is ready to see the price.
"They're going to have a rude awakening," Orben said.
