The Economic Viability of Recycling Solar Panels

🌱 Why are solar panels scrapped?

Solar panels tend to gradually become less efficient over time as their parts degrade. It is therefore usually more cost-effective to replace solar panels with new ones after roughly 25 to 30 years. Additionally, as newer and more efficient models are regularly produced, it can even be more cost-effective to replace old solar panels with newer models after already 10 to 15 years.

🌱 How much waste is expected?

As the “first generation of domestic solar panels” is now reaching the end of its lifespan, the amount of waste from solar panels is expected to grow significantly in the second half of this decade. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that there may be 4 million tonnes of scrap solar panels globally by 2030 and over 200 million tonnes by 2050. (As a reference point, the current global production of plastic lays at around 400 million tonnes annually.)

🌱 Is it economically viable to recycle solar panels?

Glass makes up roughly 80% of the weight of a solar panel. Recycling the aluminum frames and glass from solar panels is a fairly straightforward process that can be done using conventional methods (such as dismantling, crushing, and shredding the waste). The glass recovered this way is usually of a low-quality, though. While the resources found in solar panels (and their respective quantities) vary, it is typically said to cost around $15 to $30 “to dismantle, shred, mill and separate out the materials” from a solar panel in the United States. On average, U.S. recyclers get a return of $2 to $4 for the aluminum, copper, glass, lead, silver, and tin they recover from a single panel.

🌱 Is it economically viable to recover the precious materials?

As the precious materials found in solar panels are intertwined with other components, it has to date not been economically viable to recover these. Yet, while the quantity of precious materials in solar panels is small, their high value and scarcity has created an incentive to develop efficient new methods to extract them. It is said that over 60% of a solar panel’s value is contained in just 3% of its weight. Moreover, experts say that we currently lack the silver resources to produce the millions of solar panels needed for the energy transition. Some, however, also say that we might be able to recover close to three-quarters of the silver and other materials needed to produce new solar panels from old units. Notably, many of the solar panels produced in the 1990s contain larger quantities of silver.

Read more about the recycling of solar panels here:

- https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65602519

- https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2023/11/06/panelists-shed-light-on-solar-panel-recycling/

- https://www.triodos-im.com/articles/2023/case-study---recycling-wind-turbines-and-solar-panels

- https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/we-need-to-talk-about-renewables-landing-page