we all know what these things are the full-size versions of solar panels and wind turbines are
cropping up all over the place and that's a great thing for our environment right green energy and
all that and in 2018 there was a report out by a big Norwegian classification and risk management
company called DNV GL that said there'd be a growth of six and a half thousand percent
from 290 gigawatts of solar in 2016 to 19,000 gigawatts in 2050 they also said that wind and
solar combined by then would be providing two-thirds of all the world's electricity
well that's a lot of turbines and a lot of solar panels and these things are generally
rated for a lifecycle of about 30 years so that does beg a question what happens to them then
hello and welcome to just have a think you could say that both these energy generators are wonders
of our modern age seemingly conjuring electrical energy from thin air and sunshine but to achieve
the conversions of energy that are needed to make these things work requires a multitude of
different types of materials and unless those materials can be efficiently separated out at
the end of the products useful life then just like any other unloved piece of hardware there's a fair
chance they'll get hurled into landfill along with everything else that we can't be bothered to deal
with responsibly in a recent Forbes online article Jeff McMahon tells us the United States installed
7 million pounds per day of solar panels according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory a pace
that secures only fourth place among countries for installed capacity those numbers are also
considered in this comprehensive 2018 article by Kelly Pickerel for Solar Power World Kelly
sets out the size of the challenge very clearly in 2017 the United States installed ten point
six gigawatts of new solar energy using rough mathematics if every panel was three hundred
watts that's thirty five point three million new solar panels installed last year in about 30 years
a wave of thirty five point three million panels may reach the end of their lifespans not counting
the hundreds of millions of panels that flooded the US market in the last decade that may need
to be disposed off sooner and then there's wind turbines huge behemoths of steel and composite
materials like glass fiber and thermoplastics modern turbines can reach heights of over 200
meters or 720 feet with blades that are often more than 50 meters long the distribution of
wind power across the globe is not dissimilar to solar according to the global wind energy
Council there were three hundred and forty-one thousand turbines around the world at the end
of 2016 and that numbers bound to be much bigger now thanks mainly to the exponential growth in
India and China over the past couple of years add to that the hundreds of millions of solar
panels that we've just talked about and you've got a serious amount of hardware that's going to need
to be dealt with over the course of the coming decades and beyond when these technologies were
in their fledgling stages I think it's fair to that no one was really paying any attention to
what would be done with the materials at the end of their lifespan it was really just a massive
frenzied rush to get economies of scale built into their production to bring the costs down so
that these things could be competitive against the dominant technologies of fossil fuel and nuclear
that race has been pretty successfully run now and the costs of both solar and wind are firmly
established as being extremely competitive with if not cheaper than the traditional energy sources
of oil coal gas and nuclear but end-of-life disposal and recycling is still a potential
Achilles heel for renewables so how's the industry been responding well the answer to that question
depends on which part of the world you're looking at here in Europe there are strong regulations
around the disposal of waste electrical and hazardous substances and the recycling of
solar panels and wind turbines is already very high on the agenda of manufacturers and policy
makers according to the organisation Green match over 70% of the European PV manufacturers are part
of the PV cycle network members of the network show commitment to create a product which is
sustainable both during production and after purchase they realize this through mindful eco
design the elimination of toxic materials usage and through recycling according to Green match
the recycling process differs slightly for the two main types of solar panel thin film based
panels and the more common silicon based panels silicon panels are dismantled and heated to 500
degrees Celsius the glass and metals are recovered and reused the plastic coverings evaporate and
the heat from the combustion is recaptured and recycled into the system the process means that
85% of the silicon 95% of the glass and a hundred percent of the metal is recycled thin-film panels
are shredded into four or five millimeter pieces before having the various materials separated out
by mechanical and chemical processes this method results in 95 percent of semiconductor material
reuse and 90 percent of glass in 2018 Veolia opened Europe's first large-scale PV recycling
facility over in France have Veolia done this because they're staunch advocates of the green
agenda no huge multinational corporations like viola invest in large capex projects like this
for one reason and one reason only and that reason is return on investment according to
the International Renewable Energy Agency or IRENA recovered materials from PV panels could
be worth 450 million US dollars by 2030 and more than 15 billion US dollars by 2050 and
wind turbine recycling is also gaining traction in European countries with Germany leading the way
according to this 2018 report by Anna Ringel for DPA international online Germany is a world leader
when it comes to wind power there are nearly 30,000 wind turbines in operation providing more
power to the grid than in any other European country there are several elements to a wind
turbine which makes the recycling of the entire unit significantly more complicated than recycling
a solar panel civil engineer Francesco Miceli specializes in turnkey wind farm projects he's
based in Hamburg in Germany and he writes a blog about the challenges and opportunities facing the
industry in this article from January the 1st 2019 Francesco explains the least problematic element
is the tower it's usually made of steel and it can be easily sold at the current market price
the foundation is another element that can be left untouched below ground or demolished the resulting
material can be used again in construction the nacelle has several different elements including
some that are potentially contaminating for example the oil in the gearbox more complex
to recycle but still doable by far the most challenging components are the blades usually
they're made of composite materials steel and glass or carbon fiber reinforcements in a polymer
matrix and usually this matrix is thermoset meaning that the polymers are cross-linked which
is to say that it's very difficult to separate out the various elements but solutions to even this
tricky problem are being commercially pursued one european company at the forefront of this
fledgling market is called Neo Comp according to Anna Ringel Bremen based Neocon set up in 2015 it
shreds decommissioned rotor blades mixing the chippings largely of glass fiber with
residues from paper manufacture for sale to the cement industry demand is so high explains chief
executive Hans Dieter Wilken that we could in fact produce more comparatively few wind turbines are
being decommissioned right at the moment but as more and more of them come to the end of their
working lives over the coming decades so these new industries will grow rapidly providing thousands
of new jobs in rapidly changing economies over in the USA similar initiatives are beginning to take
shape at least for solar panel recycling but the movement is very much in its infancy back
at the solar power world website Kelly Pickerel spoke with Sam Vanderhoof owner of a consulting
firm called Solar Cowboys and former president of Scott Solar Kelly explains Vanderhoof and a
few colleagues recently started a new recycling program in the United States Recycle PV modeled
after Europe's successful program the program is still in its very early stages but Vanderhoof
hopes his efforts will start a movement the plan for recycled PV he says is to get volumes large
enough to build a dedicated solar recycling plant in the United States once recycle PV is processing
10,000 pounds a month a US facility will make more sense it's not an outrageous goal claims
Vanderhoof right now in Europe they can recycle that much a day Kelly Pickerel also spoke to Cara
Libby at the Electric Power Research Institute or EPRI Libby has a slightly different take on this
fledgling sector she suggests that the European model relies on the strong regulatory framework
that exists there to ensure that recycling is carried out Libby states it's still a little
premature for dedicated PV recycling facilities in the United States in the future and maybe around
2030 there will be a surge in PV waste volumes then we'll have to start thinking about a better
way to collect and recycle efficiently which to my ears sounds a lot like let's wait until
we've definitely got a massive problem and then start to think about whether we should implement
solution will we ever learn do you think well alongside Vanderhoof recycled PV initiative you
do have a couple of other beacons of hope over there across the pond in the US Kelly's Solar
Power World website goes on to tell us there are a few states trying to get the required recycling
ball moving in July 2017 Washington became the first state to pass a solar stewardship bill
requiring manufacturers selling solar products into the state to have end-of-life recycling
programs for their own products manufacturers that don't provide a recycling program or outline will
not be able to sell solar modules into the state after January the first 2021 regional take back
locations will be set up to accept solar panels at no cost to the system owner and the state may
charge manufacturers for the program Washington based solar panel manufacturer ITEC energy
assisted with the bills writing most of us here at the company feel strongly about being strong
environmental stewards said Evan Busch special programs coordinator at ITEC it's important to
spearhead these efforts before there's a big volume that will need to be disposed of with
this in place we'll be more prepared New York had a similar bill on the Senate calendar in
2018 which would require solar panel manufacturers to collect end-of-life panels for recycling and
Californians SB 489 passed in 2015 and encourages safe disposal of old panels California designates
end-of-life solar panels as universal waste a type of hazardous waste that's widely used
in homes and businesses like TVs or batteries by California law universal waste cannot be trashed
or land filled but as is so often the case in this brave new world the biggest challenges
can be found in Asia and in particular in the stratospheric growth of renewables in China it's
just one example of the scale of our ambition the Longyangxi solar park in Shanghai seen from space
4 million solar panels across 27 square kilometers of land generating enough power for 200,000 homes
and that scale of production will inevitably mean a similar scale of waste a few decades from
now returning to the International Renewable Energy Agency report we're provided with this
chart showing how China's solar power waste will stack up as we move towards 2050 the obstacle in
this part of the world is not technological or even economical at least up until recently it's
just been a simple lack of awareness that there's even a problem at all according to this report for
the sixth tone dot com the urgency of solar panel recycling hasn't yet dawned on most manufacturers
in China expenses related to the handling of solar panel waste disposal or recycling aren't factored
into production costs and that's different from Europe where a directive requiring producers to
take responsibility for recycling the panel's they sell has been in place since 2012 there could be a
big payoff for getting a head start on recycling according to international consulting firm global
market insights there's a huge untapped potential for a solar panel recycling industry the global
solar panel recycling management market is likely to be worth 360 million dollars by 2024 with the
Chinese market exceeding 50 million and let's not forget our earlier projection of 15 billion
dollars by 2050 Peng Peng general secretary of the China New Energy Investment and Finance Alliance
a nonprofit that helps connect renewable energy organizations compared solar waste to the peak
of the electronic waste problem between 2010 and 2015 just as China introduced rules on electronic
waste stopping it from becoming the dumping site for the world's toxic electronics scraps so Peng
believes that China could do the same before solar waste becomes critical in 2030 as we've seen on
so many occasions there's simply no one silver bullet that will solve all the problems of our
climate crisis and many of the new apparently sustainable solutions clearly bring with them
some very significant challenges of their own on the other hand as the European model so clearly
demonstrates the solutions are already in place and in many cases quite well established it's yet
another example of how national and international government regulation and incentive will play a
key role in kick-starting commercial actors into doing the right thing environmentally
with the more visionary entrepreneurs spotting an opportunity for big windfalls if they can be
the first to corner a brand new market that's it for this week hopefully another thought-provoking
topic and one that will no doubt generate some conversation down in the comment section below
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