More and more startups are emerging with the goal of recovering, recycling, and reusing materials left behind from new developments in climate technology. These organizations aim to build a circular economy for clean energy components by recycling end-of-life solar panels and wind turbines.
Companies like Solarcylcle, First Solar, Li-Cycle, Redwood Materials, Carbon Rivers and Veolia work to reduce waste and find economic uses for it while addressing environmental issues. The rapidly expanding solar and wind energy industries and the rising popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) serve as reminders to address the waste problem.
Growing dependence on renewable energy resources is the need of the hour to reduce exploitation of fossil fuels. Growing renewable energy sectors will produce tons of garbage soon. In the near future, these millions of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, wind turbines, and lithium-ion EV batteries will reach the end of their individual lifecycles.
Some new startups are looking to create a circular economy for clean energy components. They want to make sure they don’t repeat past mistakes of not cleaning up decommissioned coal mines, oil wells, and power plants. These startups aim to recover, recycle, and reuse parts of climate tech innovation to make a sustainable and profitable solution.
Solarcycle is a prime example of a company attempting to solve the future climate tech waste problem. Founded last year in Oakland, California, the company built a recycling factory in Odessa, Texas. There it removes and reintroduces 95% of the materials from end-of-life solar panels and reintroduces them into the supply chain.
It sells recovered silver and copper on commodity markets, as well as glass, silicon, and aluminum to solar panel producers and operators.
Citing an EIA estimate suggesting that solar will account for 54% of new utility-scale electric-generating capacity in the United States this year, Solarcycle CEO Suvi Sharma said, “Solar is becoming the dominant form of power generation. But with that comes a new set of challenges and opportunities. We have done a phenomenal job making solar efficient and cost-effective, but really have not done anything yet on making it circular and dealing with the end-of-life [panels].â€
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), wind and solar energy generated 13.6% of utility-scale electricity last year. These figures will likely climb as renewable energy expands. Some of the nation’s largest utilities are already well ahead of schedule.
All-electric vehicle sales increased to 5.8% of the total 13.8 million vehicles purchased in the United States in 2022, up from 3.2% in 2021. With the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently proposed tailpipe emissions restrictions and power plant rules, EV sales might capture a 67% market share by 2032. Furthermore, more utilities will be forced to accelerate their power generation shift.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) both give tax breaks and financing for domestic solar panel and component manufacture. They also provide funds for research into novel solar technology and encourages to safe recycling end-of-life solar panels and wind turbines.
Other than Solarcycle, First Solar, since 2005, has had an in-house recycling programme. Chief product officer of First Solar, Pat Buehler mentioned in his mail, “We recognized that integrating circularity into our operations was necessary to scale the business in a sustainable way. But rather than extracting metals and glass from retired panels and manufacturing scrap, our recycling process provides closed-loop semiconductor recovery for use in new modules.â€
First Solar is the largest solar panel manufacturer in the United States. Founded in Tempe, Arizona in 1999, the company now has production sites in Ohio and one under construction in Alabama.
The company received $7.3 million in research funding to develop a new residential rooftop panel that is more efficient than existing silicon or thin-film modules.
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Do you Know: Most solar panels that are old or damaged are disposed of in landfills, because it’s less expensive than recycling them. This happens in about 90% of cases.
Keeping solar panels from ending up in landfills
“The average lifespan of a solar panel is about 25 to 30 years, and there are more than 500 million already installed across the country. Ranging from a dozen on a residential home’s rooftop to thousands in a commercial solar farm.†said Suvi Sharma.
With solar capacity increasing at a 21% annual rate, tens of millions more panels will be installed — and removed. A study published in 2019 in Renewable Energy warns that from 2030 to 2060, we may see around 9.8 million metric tonnes of waste from solar panels. This issue emphasizes the pressing need for more sustainable and efficient methods of disposing of solar panels to mitigate the environmental impact on our planet.
Sharma further added, “Currently, about 90% of end-of-life or defective solar panels end up in landfills, largely because it costs far less to dump them than to recycle them. We see that gap closing over the next five to 10 years significantly. Through a combination of recycling becoming more cost-effective and landfilling costs only increasing.â€
Massive wind turbine blades are almost completely recyclable
Retired wind turbines present yet another recycling issue, as well as business potential. Wind turbines have a 20-year lifespan, and most decommissioned ones have joined retired solar panels in landfills. However, almost every component of a turbine is recyclable, from the steel tower to the composite blades, which are normally 170 feet long. But the most recent models exceed 350 feet and this can be problematic.
According to a 2021 NREL research, between 3,000 and 9,000 blades will be retired each year in the United States for the following five years. This number is estimated to increase between 10,000 and 20,000 until 2040. By 2050, 235,000 blades will be removed, totaling 2.2 million metric tonnes of total mass. It is the equivalent of more than 60,627 fully loaded tractor loads.
Learn about circular renewable energy economy and how it works
Companies in the circular economy decided not to let all of that waste go to waste this is why recycling end-of-life solar panels and wind turbines is followed. Wind turbine manufacturers are partnering with recycling partners in the spirit of business sustainability, primarily to avoid having their blades pile up in landfills.
Carbon Rivers, based in Knoxville, has created equipment to shred not only turbine blades but also discarded composite materials from the automotive, construction, and marine industries. It then transforms them into reclaimed glass fibre using a pyrolysis process. David Morgan, chief strategy officer of the company said, “It can be used for next-generation manufacturing of turbine blades, marine vessels, composite concrete and auto parts.â€
Veolia North America, launched a recycling factory in Missouri in 2020, processing around 2,600 blades to date. Julie Angulo, senior vice president, technical and performance says, “We are seeing the first wave of blades that are 10 to 12 years old, but we know that number is going to go up year-on-year.â€
Veolia uses the kiln co-processing for this purpose. The company has an innovative approach of reconstituting shredded blades and other composite materials to produce fuel. It then sells that to cement makers as a replacement for coal, sand, and clay. In cement manufacture, the technique reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 27% and water use by 13%.
Competitors to GE Renewable Energy company are working on ways to make the next generation of blades more recyclable from the start. Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy has begun manufacturing totally recyclable blades for both land-based and offshore wind turbines. They aim at making all of its turbines fully recyclable by 2040. Vestas introduced a novel technology in February that allows epoxy-based turbine blades to be broken down and recycled.
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Electric vehicle Li-ion battery scrap
Because EV batteries have a lifespan of 10 to 20 years, or 100,000-200,000 miles, recyclers are now primarily handling battery manufacturers’ scrap.
Li-Cycle, based in Toronto, has invented a two-step technique that converts batteries and garbage into inert materials. It then shreds them using a hydrometallurgy process to produce minerals that are sold back into the main manufacturing supply chain. Li-Cycle’s co-founder and CEO Ajay Kochhlar says, “We’re on track to start commissioning the Rochester [facility] at the end of this year.â€
Redwood Materials was founded outside of Reno, Nevada, in 2017 by JB Straubel. He is Tesla’s former chief technology officer and co-founder, and is taking a novel approach to battery recycling. To break down batteries and scrap Redwood also uses hydrometallurgy.
In an email Redwood stated, “We’re aiming to produce 100 GWh/year of cathode-active materials and anode foil for one million EVs by 2025. By 2030, our goal is to scale to 500 GWh/year of materials, which would enable enough batteries to power five million EVs.â€
Ascend Elements, headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, also uses hydrometallurgy technology. They extract cathode-active material mostly from battery manufacturing scrap, as well as discarded lithium-ion batteries. Safe battery disposal is equally important as that is safe recycling end-of-life solar panels and wind turbines.
In this context, senior energy sustainability analyst at NREL, Garvin Heath said, “It’s important to make sure we keep in mind the context of these emerging technologies and understand their full lifecycle. The circular economy provides a lot of opportunities to these industries to be as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible at a relatively early phase of their growth.â€