Expensive EarthTalk: How are we going to cope with all of the waste if the photo voltaic panels that everybody is placing up in the present day will put on out in 20-30 years?
—Paul B., Chevy Chase, MD
When purchasing for inexperienced alternate options for residence energy technology, there are a number of options that the typical shopper seems for. Most hope to search out choices which might be probably the most environment friendly, or the lightest, or probably the most sturdy, however what about probably the most recyclable?
This query is usually ignored when making such purchases. Sadly, ignoring a product’s life cycle can have disastrous penalties, particularly if decreasing 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. Because of this inside the subsequent 15 years, thousands and 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 might 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 may trigger groundwater issues round it. Photo voltaic panels comprise many poisonous compounds, comparable to lead, and a carcinogen referred to as cadmium telluride. If any of those chemical substances dissolve in a freshwater supply, the water turns into unsafe to make use of in most capacities.
Even when photo voltaic panels will be recycled, there’s little incentive to take action. Produced from supplies comparable to aluminum, copper, silicon and glass, roughly 80-85 p.c of a photo voltaic panel will be recycled; nevertheless, the method truly prices greater than the price of the uncooked supplies.
Luckily, the Workplace of Photo voltaic Power Applied sciences of the US Division of Power is working laborious to create a complete system for managing and recycling photo voltaic panels. By 2030, they plan to cut back the price of photo voltaic panel recycling to simply $3 per panel. This discount makes photo voltaic panel recycling an economically viable enterprise!
That stated, there’s nonetheless the choice of rebuilding new photo voltaic panels from previous ones. Nonetheless, in an effort to do that, direct reuse of the supplies obtained is critical. For instance, Silicon will be instantly recycled again into photo voltaic panels, or it may even be used within the anodes of lithium-ion batteries—the useful storage unit of electrical energy generated through the use of photo voltaic panels.
However what about making photo voltaic panels greener? As a substitute of silicon photo voltaic panels (what individuals often purchase), there’s another choice out there referred to 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 substances comparable to lead, cadmium, hydrofluoric acid or hydrochloric acid to supply, require much less water, and 80 p.c much less vitality in vitality 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
EarthTalk® created by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for a 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. See extra at https://emagazine.com. To donate, go to https://earthtalk.org. Ship inquiries to: [email protected].
