Waste from end-of-life photo voltaic panels and different solar-related tools offers a chance to get well beneficial supplies, together with different advantages. The Worldwide Renewable Power Company mentioned that by 2030, the cumulative worth of recoverable uncooked supplies from end-of-life panels alone shall be about $450 million worldwide, which the company mentioned is equal to the price of uncooked supplies wanted right this moment to fabricate about 60 million new panels.
Recycling this waste additionally means it isn’t being despatched to landfills. Many solar-related elements might be recycled, together with glass, aluminum, copper, and plastics.
Brett Henderson, CEO and co-founder of SolarPanelRecycling.com (SPR), just lately supplied POWER with perception into the marketplace for recycled solar energy elements. Henderson addressed the challenges confronted by the photo voltaic business in relation to extra sustainable and financial practices, at a time when solar energy corporations are taking a look at methods to make the most of extra home manufacturing, and recycling of supplies, to assist remedy provide chain points.
POWER: How do you understand the marketplace for recycled supplies from the solar energy sector?
Henderson: The marketplace for recycled supplies from the solar energy sector is poised for important development, pushed by the rising want amongst producers throughout numerous industries to include recycled uncooked commodities into their manufacturing processes. This shift affords substantial worth by mitigating provide chain variability and selling the onshoring of the vertical provide chain. Moreover, it aligns with their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives, enhancing their dedication to environmental sustainability and circularity.
Nonetheless, present market constraints stem from producers’ reluctance to adapt their processes to accommodate these recycled supplies, typically choosing virgin supplies till a dependable and regular provide is offered. This hesitation hinders the complete potential of integrating recycled photo voltaic supplies into mainstream manufacturing.
Because the photo voltaic business continues to prioritize recycling over landfilling or incomplete recycling, the supply of unpolluted commodities will enhance. This, in flip, will present producers with a constant provide, encouraging them to include recycled supplies into their processes. The growth of this apply won’t solely open new markets for recovered photo voltaic supplies, but additionally drive down recycling prices, making a extra sustainable and economically viable ecosystem for all stakeholders concerned.
However to verify photo voltaic recycling stays significant, there must be a better normal and robust rules for what constitutes recycling. Extracting probably the most beneficial materials after which discarding the remaining, ought to by no means depend as recycling. That’s simply extra of the extraction economic system from which we need to transition away.
Lastly, there stays a big want for schooling and outreach to completely notice the worth proposition of selecting accountable recycling options over the cost-saving choice of landfilling. Regardless of the photo voltaic business’s developments, the unlucky actuality is that landfilling continues to be a extra frequent alternative than it must be within the utility, business and industrial, and residential sectors. This highlights a spot that must be addressed by way of extra sturdy consciousness campaigns and incentives to shift the steadiness in favor of sustainable practices. By persevering with to emphasise the long-term environmental and financial advantages of recycling, we are able to hope to see a stronger adoption of those practices, guaranteeing that the solar energy sector actually leads by instance in sustainable power manufacturing.
POWER: Are you contracting with particular corporations and/or utilities to make sure a gradual provide of recycled supplies?
Henderson: Sure, we’re actively contracting with particular corporations and utilities to make sure a gradual provide of recycled supplies. Our mission is to advocate for circularity by way of true photo voltaic tools recycling, which is barely achieved by clear commodity extraction from photo voltaic modules and reintroducing the supplies again into provide chains. This depends on sustaining a excessive quantity, regular stream of photo voltaic panels and tools flowing into our recycling services situated all through the U.S.
We obtain this by way of strategic contracts and partnerships that cowl company-wide recycling for all initiatives, in addition to on a project-by-project foundation for builders, EPCs, O&Ms, asset homeowners, and utilities. We’re at all times in search of new partnerships as a supply of photo voltaic tools for our services.
We’re proud to be named a recycler for EDP Renewables’ recycling initiatives and to conduct large-scale recycling initiatives with Duke Power and Texas Inexperienced Energy, amongst many different regional and nationwide O&Ms, utilities, and EPCs. Equally vital, we now have provider contracts in place with producers throughout a myriad of industries, consuming our cleanly separated commodities from our recycling strains.
The notion that recycling is a 25-year-down-the-road problem is categorically false. New building initiatives require instant recycling options for breakage throughout transportation and set up. O&Ms have ongoing wants when panels fail or are broken whereas on-line. Moreover, there’s a clear necessity for large-scale recycling throughout main climate occasions or expertise refreshes (repowering). By addressing these instant and steady wants, we guarantee a constant provide of unpolluted commodities, thereby supporting the broader adoption of sustainable practices within the photo voltaic business.
POWER: Are you accepting supplies from utility-scale photo voltaic installations and from residential and business and industrial websites? Is there a distinction within the supplies in relation to which sector they arrive from?
Henderson: The brief reply is sure, we are able to settle for any kind of photo voltaic tools from all sorts of installations. There is no such thing as a distinction by way of supplies to be recovered.
The longer reply is a little more difficult. That’s as a result of with residential websites, there’s a problem of logistics and prices of transportation with the decrease quantity of panels at one given website. However as we proceed to turn into extra localized with distributed recycling facilities all through the nation, it will turn into less expensive. Our aim is to guarantee that not one piece of photo voltaic tools results in a landfill.
POWER: Will the merchandise you obtain be repurposed for brand spanking new solar energy services? Are there different makes use of for recycled solar energy supplies?
Henderson: Throughout repowering (expertise refreshes), we obtain panels in working order with life left in them. In these cases, the unit might be put again on-line in a brand new photo voltaic facility that doesn’t require a better wattage per panel set up. As for the recycling facet, which is the majority of our quantity, there are some elements and supplies that may be reused in photo voltaic, however there are others, like silicon, that it isn’t presently doable to reinsert it again into the photo voltaic provide chain and as a substitute the fabric must be repurposed for different makes use of. There may be already analysis occurring right this moment to attempt to reuse end-of-life silicon in panels.
At present, many of the recovered supplies are cycled into the high-tech sector for electronics.
POWER: Are there particular objectives tied to having a information hub centered on analysis and growth as a part of the Texas middle?
Henderson: We’re at all times trying to enhance our recycling strategies, whether or not it’s enhancing materials extraction, extra superior equipment, or being extra environmentally sustainable. As well as, we’re additionally centered on figuring out new purposes for the recycled materials. Having a hub that focuses on R&D, will permit us to shortly implement findings in our rising community of recycling services. Though our Texas plant is a regional plant with a smaller footprint to our flagship facility in North Carolina, we really feel having our information hub in a state that has the best renewable power technology within the nation is a pure match. We absolutely count on to have a number of recycling services in Texas.
POWER: Are you able to speak about a number of the collaborations with educational establishments, business companions, and authorities businesses?
Henderson: We collaborate with the Electrical Energy Analysis Institute (EPRI), Columbia College, College of Virginia, and main nationwide utilities to call a couple of.
As well as, we collaborate with business organizations, reminiscent of SEIA (Photo voltaic Power Industries Affiliation), to assist lead the business in setting excessive requirements and implementing rules for photo voltaic tools recycling. We have now helped a number of state legislators craft legal guidelines and rules that guarantee photo voltaic tools is diverted from landfills. Our CFO, Steven Turk, has spoken on Capitol Hill with numerous federal legislators.
POWER: How vital is circularity to the solar energy sector?
Henderson: Circularity is vital. At SolarPanelRecycling.com we’re centered on constructing a real round economic system. Recycling was meant to be one of many three legs of a round economic system however what sadly occurs within the U.S. in different recycling sectors is greenwashing of providers. In the end, a product is introduced into an incomplete recycler whom grabs the low hanging fruit if you’ll, such because the simply recyclable and valued aluminum body on a photo voltaic panel, and the remaining is co-mingled, landfilled, or despatched to a different facility, all beneath the guise of “recycling.” We have now a chance within the photo voltaic recycling business, as its early in its institution, to not let sham recycling be established, which hinders circularity. We have to maintain ourselves as much as a better normal and present what is feasible by cleanly separating all elements and commodities from a photo voltaic tools and re-introducing these again into new manufacturing. Analysis and expertise will permit for all elements of a recycled photo voltaic tools to return into the photo voltaic manufacturing business, permitting producers to not be constrained by the restricted provide of virgin sources wanted. To proceed to profitable and quickly develop photo voltaic installations all through the U.S., circularity supplied by photo voltaic recyclers will play an intricate position.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior affiliate editor for POWER (@POWERmagazine).
