Juiced by federal and state incentives, solar power in Washington state has steadily grown in the last decade. Solar installations in Seattle have doubled since 2018, and development of what will …
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Juiced by federal and state incentives, solar power in Washington state has steadily grown in the last decade. Solar installations in Seattle have doubled since 2018, and development of what will become some of the state's largest solar farms is underway.
But what happens when solar panels reach the end of their life (after 25 or 30 years)? Can they avoid the landfill?
Washington state tried to get ahead of this issue nearly eight years ago when it tucked a recycling requirement into a law for solar tax incentives.
It hoped to spur industry progress and require manufacturers to submit plans by 2021 to takeback and recycle their products. If the manufacturer didn't comply, it would be barred from selling solar panels in the state.
It was an ambitious idea, building off of momentum from the state's other recycling initiatives around electronic waste and mercury-containing lights. The solar recycling law made Washington a national pioneer.
It hasn't worked out as planned.
The compliance deadline has been pushed back twice and now facing the current deadline — July 1, 2025 — the state Department of Ecology is requesting another delay from lawmakers.
Ecology has warned that "rather than complying with the law creating a takeback program, some manufacturers have chosen to not sell solar panels in Washington," meaning the supply of solar panels into the state may be severely disrupted if nothing is done.
Recycling solar panels is notoriously tricky and expensive, and since Washington has such a small share of the national solar market, many manufacturers have just found the trouble to be not worth it, said Megan Warfield, a unit supervisor within Ecology's solid waste management program.
"I don't think the economics are such that a recycling program could be super successful right now," she said.
It also doesn't help that there is little detailed data available about solar installations and even the market data that can be purchased is incomplete, she said.
While there is statewide information available on the increasing energy generation of solar, no one in the state tracks statistics on how many panels are installed on the roofs of homes or warehouses and how close to retirement those panels might be, Warfield said.
So far only 14 companies have either submitted a recycling plan to Ecology or communicated they are unable to comply with the law, she said. There are likely dozens of other companies selling solar panels into the state that Ecology has not heard from at all, Warfield said.
However, Washington still has time, Warfield said. Even in advanced solar states like California, most panels were installed in the past decade.
Warfield said the department is hoping to avoid kicking "the can down the road any further" and is requesting to include a stakeholder process in the legislative change.
On the technological side, one of the main challenges of solar recycling is separating the solar cells from the glass and then separating elements — like valuable silicon, silver and small amounts of lead — said Meng Tao, a professor within Arizona State University's School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering.
Right now, most retired solar panels are likely hauled to landfills since shipping costs are so expensive, Tao said, and those paying to recycle solar panels are usually utilities hoping to avoid bad press.
Utilities pay around $5 to recycle a panel but the recyclers only receive around $3, he said. That's because recyclers are not able to recoup the most expensive component — silicon — and often the contaminated glass is reused for a lower-quality product like sand-blasting glass, he said.
Tao said he believes scientific solutions will come for most of the chemical and technological questions around solar recycling; however, the much more difficult question will be who will pay for it.
"Energy issues are never going to be a technology-only issue, and we still need the right policy and incentives," he said.
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