Report Reveals the Future for Solar Panel Recycling

The global solar photovoltaic (PV) boom currently under way will represent a significant untapped business opportunity as decommissioned solar panels enter the waste stream in the years ahead, according to a new report released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the International Energy Agency’s Photovoltaic Power Systems Program (IEA-PVPS).

The report, titled “End-of-Life Management: Solar Photovoltaic Panels,” offers a projection of PV panel waste volumes to 2050 and highlights that recycling or repurposing solar PV panels at the end of their roughly 30-year lifetime can unlock a large stock of raw materials and other valuable components.

The report estimates that PV panel waste, consisting mostly of glass, could total 78 million tonnes globally by 2050. If fully injected back into the economy, the value of the recovered material could exceed $15 billion by 2050. The report says this potential material influx could produce 2 billion new panels or be sold into global commodity markets, thus increasing the security of future PV supply or other raw-material-dependent products.