Solar energy is a rapidly growing market, which should be good news for the environment. Unfortunately there’s a catch. The replacement rate of solar panels is faster than expected and given the current very high recycling costs, there’s a real danger that all used panels will go straight to landfill (along with equally hard-to-recycle wind turbines). Regulators and industry players need to start improving the economics and scale of recycling capabilities before the avalanche of solar panels hits.
And that’s on top of the leaching and poisoning.
More here.
By 2035 there will be 3x more used solar panels than new ones, which will make them 4x more expensive.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 16, 2022
"The economics of solar," wrote Harvard Business Review researchers, "would darken quickly as the industry sinks under the weight of its own trash."https://t.co/sx06lNTaxj