A solar panel has a useful life of about 20 years. That means a lot of panels installed in the early part of this century are ready to be replaced. But what to do with them? Until now, most of them have simply been discarded in dumps and landfills because no commercially viable recycling process existed to recapture the precious elements inside them. But just as companies like
“Our forecasts show that recovered materials from retired panels could make up 6% of solar PV investments by 2040, compared to only 0.08% today,” Rystad says. “The material supply side is expected to encounter bottlenecks with the growing demand for minerals, and recycling can be a supply relief as panels reach the end-of-life stage.”
When solar panels are recycled today, these materials are rarely recovered. Instead, recyclers typically remove the aluminum frame holding the panel together, strip the copper wiring off the back, and shred the panel itself, creating a solar hash that’s sold as crushed glass. Those three products — aluminum, copper, and crushed glass — might fetch a recycler $3 per panel, Tao says.
The average investments in clean energy will be around $3T/year or $150T as a start going to net zero 2050. Reusing after smart recycling is going to be some of the new high profitable industries.