Expensive EarthTalk: How are we going to cope with all of the waste if the photo voltaic panels put in by everybody right this moment will probably be used up in 20-30 years?
– Paul B., Chevy Chase, MD
When searching for inexperienced alternate options for dwelling energy era, there are various options that the common shopper appears for. Most hope to seek out choices which can be essentially the most environment friendly, or the lightest, or essentially the most sturdy, however what about essentially the most recyclable?
This query is usually neglected when making such purchases. Sadly, ignoring a product’s life cycle can have disastrous penalties, particularly if lowering your environmental footprint is a priority.
Take photo voltaic panels, for instance. The typical photo voltaic panel lasts about 25 years, and most of them are bought and used inside the final 10 years. Which means inside the subsequent 15 years, hundreds of thousands of retired and damaged photo voltaic panels will flood landfills. A 2020 examine from the federally funded Nationwide Renewable Power Laboratory (NREL) discovered that as much as eight million tons of photo voltaic modules may find yourself in landfills worldwide by 2030, and by 2050 this photo voltaic panels can account for 10 p.c of all e-waste on the planet.
To make issues worse, if the waste just isn’t disposed of correctly, it could actually trigger groundwater issues round it. Photo voltaic panels include many poisonous compounds, comparable to lead, and a carcinogen generally known as cadmium telluride. If any of those chemical compounds dissolve in a freshwater supply, the water turns into unsafe to make use of in most capacities.
Even when photo voltaic panels might be recycled, there may be little incentive to take action. Made out of supplies comparable to aluminum, copper, silicon and glass, roughly 80-85 p.c of a photo voltaic panel might be recycled; nevertheless, the method really prices greater than the price of the uncooked supplies.
Thankfully, the Workplace of Photo voltaic Power Applied sciences of the US Division of Power is working exhausting to create a complete system for managing and recycling photo voltaic panels. By 2030, they plan to scale back the price of photo voltaic panel recycling to only $3 per panel. This discount makes photo voltaic panel recycling an economically viable enterprise!
That stated, there may be nonetheless the choice of rebuilding new photo voltaic panels from outdated ones. Nevertheless, as a way to do that, direct reuse of the supplies obtained is critical. For instance, Silicon might be instantly recycled again into photo voltaic panels, or it could actually even be used within the anodes of lithium-ion batteries—the useful storage unit of electrical energy generated by utilizing photo voltaic panels.
However what about making photo voltaic panels greener? As a substitute of silicon photo voltaic panels (what individuals normally purchase), there may be another choice obtainable generally known as Sunflare thin-film photo voltaic panels. The light-weight modules have a carbon footprint of 20 p.c that of silicon, they don’t require poisonous chemical compounds comparable to lead, cadmium, hydrofluoric acid or hydrochloric acid to provide, require much less water, and 80 p.c much less power in power to do. . They’re additionally paper skinny, require no silicon refinement, no glass, and no mounts, and are extraordinarily environment friendly in low gentle situations!
CONTACTS: Photo voltaic Photovoltaic Module Recycling: A Survey of US Insurance policies and Initiatives, www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/74124.pdf; Sunflare Photo voltaic, www.sunflaresolar.com.
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