For now, nonetheless, solar energy recycling corporations face significant economic, technological and regulatory challenges. Part of the issue, says NREL’s Curtis, is the shortage of knowledge on panel recycling rates, hampering potential policy responses that might provide more incentives for solar farm operators to recycle used panels as a substitute of throwing them away.
Another problem is that the toxicity characterization washout procedure—the EPA-approved method used to find out whether a product or material comprises hazardous elements that may leach into the environment—is taken into account flawed. As a result, some solar farm owners are “over-managing” their panels as hazardous without formally identifying hazardous waste, Curtis said. Ultimately, they pay more to get rid of them in landfills where hazardous waste is allowed to be landfilled or recycled.
The International Energy Agency has assessed whether solar panels containing lead, cadmium and selenium would affect human health if disposed of in hazardous or municipal waste landfills and determined that the danger is low. Still, the agency said wa report 2020its findings didn’t support landfilling: recycling, it stated, “further mitigation” of environmental problems.
NREL is currently investigating another process for determining whether panels are unsafe. “We have to figure it out since it definitely impacts the responsibility and value of constructing recycling more competitive,” Curtis said.
Despite these uncertainties, 4 states recently enacted solar module recycling laws. California, which has probably the most solar installations, allows panels to be disposed of in landfills, but only after they’ve been verified as secure by a chosen lab, which may cost over $1,500. As of July 2022, California had just one recycling facility that accepted solar panels.
IN Washington statethe act aimed toward ensuring an environmentally secure approach to recycling photovoltaic panels is to be implemented in July 2025; New Jersey officials expect to release a report on solar waste management this spring and North Carolina directed state environmental officials to research the decommissioning of utility-scale solar projects. (North Carolina currently requires PV panels to be disposed of as hazardous waste in the event that they contain heavy metals comparable to silver or, within the case of older panels, hexavalent chromium, lead, cadmium and arsenic.)
In the European Union, used photovoltaic panels have been treated as electronic waste since 2012 in accordance with the EU directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment, often called WEEE. The directive requires all member states to fulfill minimum standards, however the actual e-waste recycling rate varies from country to country, said Marius Mordal Bakke, senior solar supplier research analyst at Rystad Energy, a research firm based in Oslo, Norway. . Despite this law, the EU’s PV recycling rate isn’t any higher than the US rate – around 10 percent – mainly resulting from the problem of extracting priceless materials from the panels, Bakke said.
However, he predicts that recycling will develop into more common because the variety of end-of-life panels increases to the purpose where it would present a business opportunity, providing recyclers with priceless materials to sell. He added that governments could help speed up this variation by banning solar panels from being sent to landfills and providing incentives comparable to tax breaks for anyone who uses solar panels.
“At some point in the longer term, you will see so many panels going out of service that you will have to begin recycling,” Bakke said. “It will develop into profitable by itself, no matter commodity prices.”
