Sustainable solar panels: a new industrial frontier

The use of photovoltaics (PV) has grown at an unprecedented pace since the early 2000s. By the end of 2018, PV plants were responsible for around 480 GW of installed capacity worldwide and are expected to reach global capacity of 2,840 GW by 2030 and 8,519 GW by 2050, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). As the global PV market increases, so will the volume of decommissioned PV panels. Considering that the average life cycle of a solar panel is around 30 years, this means that large quantities of electronic waste are going to be generated starting in 2030. By 2050, PV modules will account for an estimated 10 percent of global electronic waste, according to a Salesforce report titled More Than a Megawatt: Embedding Social & Renewable Impact in the Renewable Energy Procurement Process. This is why the sustainability impact of solar PV projects extends beyond generating clean energy, and why we cannot overlook the environmental and social aspects of manufacturing and disposing of PV hardware, according to Salesforce. As mentioned in our previous article on "Community engagement: a key aspect of RE procurement", building more wind and solar plants is not enough. These facilities must go beyond simply generating clean power and displacing fossil fuels on the grid: they must also implement best practices that create additional benefits for the environmental and social ecosystems that surround them, in line with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To this end RE developers such as Enel Green Power are looking to build sustainability and circular economy criteria into the purchase and design of the hardware underlying solar power installations. For example, the company requires that all its modules be certified in terms of end-of-life recyclability by a third-party Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). Any inverters it purchases must come with sustainability certificates under ISO 14064 (emissions) and ISO 14067 (carbon footprint). Another resource for purchasers, according to the Salesforce report, is the Green Electronics Council’s EPEAT ecolabel, which identifies products that meet lifecycle-based sustainability performance criteria for PV modules and inverters. The criteria address multiple issues, including product materials and sourcing, energy and water use in manufacturing, social performance in the supply chain, and responsible end-of-life recycling. These translate into quantifiable benefits and reportable reductions in greenhouse gases, toxics, and solid waste. A circular solar panel supply chain However, purchasing certified products is not enough: we also need to look at the solar panel supply chain from a circular economy perspective. This means recycling and reusing currently installed panels, which must be recovered at the end of their life cycle in ways that maximize value. Indeed, responsible recycling of early-loss or end-of-life PV modules can reduce waste and inject valuable raw materials such as glass, aluminum, silver, and copper back into the economy, according to the More Than a Megawatt report. As well, new PV panels must be the brainchildren of circular design: the key is to keep their end-of-life in mind while they're on the drawing board, in order to facilitate repairs and extend their usefulness. To this end, it is crucial to work on design aspects such as modularity, disassembly, standardization, and choice of materials, including the use of biological or recycled materials. Responsible end-of-life management becomes increasingly important to reclaim valuable resources, contribute to a circular economy and make sure that today’s clean energy plants don't turn into a future waste burden, the More Than a Megawatt report pointed out. Committing to a sustainable solar industry Enel Green Power is strongly committed to the development of a sustainable solar industry through sound circular technologies. Currently, the company is pursuing a two-pronged approach: reusing decommissioned PV modules, and recycling PV end-of-life products. For example, Enel Green Power is among the companies and research institutes taking part in PHOTORAMA, a European Union project to draw up a profitable and sustainable circular value chain for a carbon neutral PV industry. The aim of the consortium is to develop efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly technologies to recycle PV end-of-life products and manufacturing scraps, and to recover over 95 percent of secondary raw materials in order to reinject them into the PV manufacturing value chain. Meanwhile across the ocean, EGP is actively participating in the PV Module Second Life project supported by the Chilean Economic Development Agency (CORFO). The idea is to develop and validate testing protocols for PV modules that have been withdrawn from operations before their end-of-life, with a view to reusing them in different scenarios and conditions. The goal is to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of redirecting decommissioned modules to the secondary market, creating the basis for a circular economy approach. The upside: a vast new market End-of-life management for PV panels can spawn new industries, creating public and private sector jobs and yielding considerable new economic value within the global shift to sustainable long-term development, according to a joint report by the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems (IEA-PVPS) and IRENA. If handled right, the new environmental challenge posed by the solar panel supply chain could turn into a massive economic opportunity: responsible recycling of PV panels has the potential to generate raw material to create two billion new panels by 2050. In addition, recycling or repurposing solar PV panels at the end of their roughly 30-year lifetime can unlock an estimated stock of 78 million tons of raw materials and other valuable components globally by 2050. If fully injected back into the economy, the value of the recovered material could exceed USD 15 billion by 2050. In short, the PV recycling sector can play an essential role in the world transition to a sustainable, economically viable and increasingly renewables-based energy future, says the IEA-PVPS and IRENA report.

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Sustainable solar panels: a new industrial frontier

Sustainable solar panels: a new industrial frontier

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