Stopping solar waste with circularity

No matter how much the solar industry talks a good game about sustainability, the reality is that we are ignoring a looming issue: solar waste. There will be at least 24 billion PV modules installed on earth by 2050 – enough to stretch to the moon and back. That’s a conservative estimate. How on earth, literally, are we going to dispose of today’s PV modules safely and responsibly once they reach their end of life? What will the financial, environmental and societal cost be? You could call it the solar industry’s own ‘inconvenient truth’. 

Solar energy is already infinitely better for our planet than burning coal, gas and oil, so it’s no wonder recyclability and circularity are low on the agenda today. Some people might think, what’s the huge rush to make solar even more sustainable, especially when the industry is still fighting to compete with fossil energy? At DSM, we create materials technology for PV modules. We spend much of our time thinking about how materials perform at the most intricate and precise level – and not just our own materials, but many of the materials used in the solar industry. But we are also thinking about what happens after performance. How can we design with circularity in mind? 

https://cdn.pes.eu.com/v/20180916/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/PES-S-1-19-DSM-comment-V2-1.pdf