Back in 2017 I had solar panels installed on the roof of my little terraced house,
and they were a pretty good investment in my view. I got a 4.8 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery
storage system at the same time as well, and the combined setup keeps my electricity bills nice and
low for six months of the year and close to zero during periods of mid-summer sunshine like we're
currently enjoying here in the UK. The projection is that I'll break even on costs in year seven,
which for me will be about 2024, after which any electricity from the panels will effectively
be free for the rest of their operational lifetime, which could be 15 years or more,
or judging by the feedback from some of you very long time solar panel users out there
it could be way longer! A few folks have told me their panels are still going strong after 30
years! But however well your panels hold up, they will inevitably eventually come a point where they
need replacing. And that raises the old chestnut of what happens to the dead panels when they
get scrapped. Until recently the answer to that question has usually been to shred them and chuck
them into landfill along with everything else we can't be bothered to deal with responsibly.
And when the number of panels in operation globally was relatively low that waste could be
massaged into the general garbage without anyone really noticing. But as the number of panels
continues to grow almost exponentially, the folks in the solar PV industry are realizing that the
lack of effective recycling is kind of making them look bad. And at the same time some of the world's
more entrepreneurial types are starting to wonder whether there might just be some money to be made
from the hundreds of millions of panels that are due to be scrapped in the coming decades
if they can just find a way to transport and process them all in a cost effective way.
So are they right? Can it be done at scale, and can profits really be made along the way?
Well a new report published in July 2022 says this..."Oh Yeah!"
Hello and welcome to just have a think. Now I've got to be honest, I always feel a little bit
uncomfortable using the profit motive as a means to justify taking actions that we should have been
taking anyway as responsible human beings. But sadly in most cases that seems to be the only way
to motivate the folks holding the purse strings. I guess the trick is to attract entrepreneurial
investment that actually results in a positive impact on our climate and environment. And if
this latest analysis from the Norwegian research consultancy Rystad Energy is anything to go by
then solar PV recycling definitely fits that bill. Solar panels contain all sorts of components,
some very valuable like silver and others very energy intensive to produce like polysilicon,
but all of which could potentially be harvested from old panels and reused in new ones. The
trouble is landfill is far too cheap and easy an option nowadays and prices for recycled PV
materials just don't currently compensate for the cost of transportation sorting and processing
required to separate them all out and ship them to different locations. But according to this latest
Rystad analysis, demand for recycled solar panel components is set to skyrocket in the coming years
as the number of installations surges and the threat of a material supply bottleneck looms.
Rystad's new set of projections puts the value of recyclable materials from PV panels at more than
2.7 billion dollars in 2030 compared to only 177 million in 2022. And more like 80 billion dollars
by 2050. The transition away from fossil fuel and towards more sustainable energy comes with its
own set of significant challenges, as we've looked at many times on this channel. Not least of which
is the relentless demand for the materials and minerals needed to make solar panels. And here
again the Rystad report goes further than the currently accepted thinking on the subject. The
International Energy Agency, or IEA, suggests that about 40% of the world's power should be
generated by solar by 2050. But Rystad calculates that in a scenario that keeps global temperatures
to just 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, solar will be providing more like 53% of
global power. And they reckon the current rate and scale of new solar installations around the world
puts us well on track to meet that number. In 2018 the world was marvelling at a vast new
facility in China known as the Longyiangxi Dam Solar Park. NASA had photographed the park from
space and its 4 million solar panels covered an area of 10 square miles with a generating
capacity of 850 megawatts. That's already been dwarfed by the Bhadla solar park in India
which boasts more than 10 million panels on an area of land about 22 square miles in size
and with a generating capacity of 2245 megawatts. And even this monster will look like small fry
when the final phase of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum solar park in Dubai is completed in a few
years time. By then the MBR Solar Park will have a generating capacity of 5 gigawatts - enough to
supply nearly 1.5 million homes and offset about 9 million tons of CO2 emissions each year. So that's
an awful lot of panels that will need to be dealt with at the end of their operational lifetime.
Rystad analyst Kristen Stuge said "rising energy costs, improved recycling technology
and government regulations may pave the way for a market where more defunct solar panels are sent
to recycling rather than the nearest landfill. Recycling PV panels can help operators save costs,
overcome supply chain woes and increase the likelihood of countries meeting their solar
capacity goals." There's plenty of good stuff to be harvested too. The highest value components are
aluminium, silver, copper and polysilicon. Silver accounts for only about 0.05% of a panel by weight
but it makes up 14 percent of the material value. Polysilicon is currently derived through very
energy and carbon intensive processes, which is reflected in its high price. And copper and
aluminium are both commodities in high demand as well. Rystad Energy reckons that by 2035
PV recycling will be supplying at least eight percent of the polysilicon,
about 11% of the aluminium and more than 20% of the silver needed for new solar panels, with
those percentages constantly rising as we approach mid-century. That'll take a great deal of strain
off the mining sector and significantly reduce the carbon footprint of solar PV panel manufacturing.
In Europe there are already strong regulations around the disposal of waste electrical and
hazardous substances and as part of those regulations 85 percent of decommissioned PV panels
must be collected and 80% must be recycled. Three-quarters of all European PV manufacturers
are part of an EU-funded non-profit recycling body called PV cycle which by the end of 2018
had already collected more than 27,000 tons of panels of which about 95 percent
have been recycled. Similar initiatives are happening over in the States. In 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.
New York has a similar bill on its statute books called the solar panel collection act, and
California's SB 489 bill passed in 2015 designates end-of-life solar panels as universal waste, which
encompasses all types of hazardous electrical waste widely used in homes and businesses. By
California law, universal waste can't be trashed or landfilled. In 2022 a US startup called Solar
Cycle was founded to provide what they describe as a low-cost eco-friendly comprehensive process for
retiring solar panels and repurposing them for new uses, much like the European PV Cycle initiative,
and so far they've raised nearly seven million dollars in seed investment
so I'll definitely be keeping an eye on how they grow in the coming months and years.
The biggest obstacles though, can be found where the biggest manufacturers operate, which means
Asia, and China in particular, where until very recently the urgency of solar panel recycling
hadn't really dawned on most manufacturers largely because the cost of solar panel waste recycling
doesn't have to be factored into their production budgets, unlike in Europe for example where for
the last decade a directive has been in place that requires producers to take responsibility
for recycling the PV panels that they sell. A recent Chinese report estimated that by 2035
that country would have more than a million tons of retired solar panels. It does look like the top
brass in central government are beginning to see the coming problem though. Earlier this year they
issued a new policy that promotes the development of technologies for the reuse of retired solar and
wind facilities and to improve recycling systems for EV batteries. But because they're so far
behind the curve on this one, there's currently a gap between the quantity of waste and the capacity
to handle it. China's first pilot project for PV recycling only came into operation in January
this year. It can process the equivalent of 10 megawatts of waste solar panels. But that number
is dwarfed by the 53,000 megawatts of new solar power that China installed just in 2021 alone!
Now, Xi Jinping's regime has historically demonstrated a breath-taking ability to catch
up extremely quickly once they set their mind to a project, so I guess we'll just have to hope
that the challenge of recycling renewable waste products is no exception. If you're
involved in this fast-growing industrial sector or if you just have views on how we're adopting
and adapting to renewable energy in general then why not jump down to the comments section below
and leave your thoughts there. That's it for this week though. A massive thank you, as always,
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