Old solar panels to become a landfill nightmare?

[Gort]

Hmm, that's not good. I will need to replace my solar panels in the next few years. I hope there will be a better disposal system by then.


Solar industry pressed to come up with recycling plan for millions of unusable panels
The solar power industry is being ordered to make a plan to recycle old panels to avoid a looming “landfill nightmare” or face harsh regulations from the federal government.

The solar power industry is being ordered to make a plan to recycle old panels to avoid a looming “landfill nightmare” or face harsh regulations from the federal government.

Environment Minister Sussan Ley will on Wednesday announce she is putting solar panel companies “on notice” demanding they produce a “clear timeline” for how to deal with old unusable technology.



Millions of solar panels are coming to the end of their lifespan in the next few years. Picture: AAP Image/David MariuzSource:AAP

“The uptake of millions of solar panels across the country from houses to solar farms has been vital from an emissions perspective, but the explosion of retailers and importers in the area, and the lack of an industry wide approach to collection and recycling, means that it also looms as a landfill nightmare,” she will say in a speech at the National Press Club.

“We can’t fix one environmental issue by creating another.”

More than 2.68 million rooftop solar power systems have been installed in Australia as of December 2020.

Installations peaked in 2011, when 360,754 panels were placed on roofs, with most of these early models having a use-by date of just ten years.


Environment Minister Sussan Ley is putting the solar panel industry ‘on notice’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary RamageSource:News Corp Australia

Current recycling options are expensive, at about $10 per panel, and not widely available.

The government has been pushing the industry to develop a plan for the past six years, and Ms Ley will next week list solar panels on the government’s “stewardship priority list,” to force a recycling solution.

“We have had some significant wins with industry over the last year in getting global battery companies on board to be a stewardship scheme and there are others that are going to have to step up in the very near future,” she will say.

The government is concerned that with millions of solar panels on houses around the country and acres of them in solar farms, a huge pipeline of waste could end up being stockpiled without any solution.


Most of the plastic in Australia ends up in landfill. Picture: Che ChorleySource:News Corp Australia

Ms Ley will also take aim at the huge amount of waste Australia sends into landfill or overseas.



“We need business and manufacturers to think about ‘recyclability’ in the design manufacture and packaging of their goods,” she said.

From July 1 a ban preventing the export of mixed plastics will come into effect, forcing companies to properly deal with waste rather than ship the contaminated bales of rubbish to another country.

“The plastic and other pollution in our oceans, and choking our landfills is a national environmental issue and the Commonwealth is investing in practical action,” Ms Ley will say.

www.news.com.au/national/solar-industry-pressed-to-come-up-with-recycling-plan-for-millions-of-unusable-panels/news-story/8ebd627abf75c4ce74fcc07c9bf2fa78

[Stellar]

Just ask the experts here - Ponto and Pim.  I'm sure they'll have ALL the answers very shortly.

Waiting .... waiting .... waiting ....

[ponto]

Coalition renewable negative beat up as an Australian company is already in the process of constructing a solar recycling factory that has 70,000+ panels ready to go when building is complete ....the government instead of spending billions of subsidising the fossil industry should help with funding the company Reclaim PV.

reneweconomy.com.au/australias-first-solar-panel-recycling-facility-to-be-established-in-adelaide/

[Gort]

One in Melbourne received a government grant ...

“First of its kind” solar panel upcycling plant on cards after federal grant win



A Melbourne-based company has won a federal government grant to set up a first of its kind solar panel upcycling plant, to transform potentially hazardous solar panel waste into value-added materials.

The initiative is led by industrial manufacturing company Ojas Group – the grant recipient – in partnership with RMIT and the University of Melbourne.

The aim of the new entity, called Elecsome, is to build a national network of collection points and facilities to provide cost-effective and environmentally sustainable PV solar panel upcycling services in Australia.

The $3 million grant awarded to Ojas Group via the federal government’s latest round of Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-Ps) will help to get that plan underway.

“The Morrison government is committed to supporting innovative ideas and assisting researchers and industry develop real-world solutions to issues facing Australia and the world,” said federal minister for industry, science and technology, Karen Andrews, in a statement on Wednesday.

“Now more than ever it is vital businesses and researchers work together to collaborate on outcomes which will generate opportunities and jobs as the nation continues its economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

According to the Elecsome website, the technology behind the up-cycling venture is backed by “years of research” at both RMIT and the University of Melbourne.

The technology claims to be able to up-cycle 97 per cent of each PV panel, with the glass used as concrete fill, replacing sand, and as other construction material including road base material.

Aluminium frames are repurposed for cans and other solar panel frames, among other things, and the electrical conductors are re-used in electrical goods. Elecsome says EVA polymer silicon will be recycled, repurposed and distributed to other industries as raw material.

The plan is to set up the factories in regional areas, to create employment opportunities, and for each factory to have a capacity of 50 tonnes of solar panel throughput.

How to sustainably manage PV panels at the end of their working lives has become an increasingly pressing issue for the industry, as rooftop solar uptake continues to boom among Australian households and businesses.

At this stage, Australia has just one dedicated solar panel recycler – Adelaide-based Reclaim PV – with more and more promising leads emerging from research coming out of various universities and spurred by backing from ARENA.

In New South Wales, a $10 million government grant scheme was launched in August to tackle the problem, with the aim of generating trial projects to increase the collection, reuse and recycling of solar panel and battery storage systems.

reneweconomy.com.au/first-of-its-kind-solar-panel-upcycling-plant-on-cards-after-federal-grant-win-58825/

[ponto]

So conclude Susan Ley is just talking shit...

[caskur]

Jun 16, 2021 12:39:14 GMT 10 Stellar said:

Just ask the experts here - Ponto and Pim.  I'm sure they'll have ALL the answers very shortly.

Waiting .... waiting .... waiting ....

*crickets chirping*

[caskur]

Jun 16, 2021 17:10:14 GMT 10 ponto said:

Coalition renewable negative beat up as an Australian company is already in the process of constructing a solar recycling factory that has 70,000+ panels ready to go when building is complete ....the government instead of spending billions of subsidising the fossil industry should help with funding the company Reclaim PV.

reneweconomy.com.au/australias-first-solar-panel-recycling-facility-to-be-established-in-adelaide/

Who funds "the government"?

Mr & Mrs Little Aussie Battler, that's who.

You thoughtless people should stop spending their money and start respecting where their money really comes from to pay for your crackpot finite ideas, on how climate change should be tackled.

[ponto]

Well dimwit pension girl Susan Ley and the coalition have been actively diminishing environmental laws.

Voting for the coalition is voting for no action on climate change and that will have reprisal eco0nomically.



Wealthy countries’ climate shift leaves Australia isolated from closest allies

Adam Morton



While the G7 calls for a ‘green revolution’ to deal with an ‘existential crisis’, it is no clearer if Scott Morrison will formally embrace a net zero target





Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, with his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, at the G7 summit in Cornwall on the weekend. Photograph: Hollie Adams/EPA


In an Australian context, the climate message from the weekend G7 summit is clear: the world’s biggest and richest democracies are acknowledging what the science demands and pledging to act in a way they haven’t before. The contrast with the debate in Canberra is growing.



The commitments from the G7 have come later than they should have. Activists are understandably sceptical about whether their actions will rise to meet the leaders’ words, and critical of the failure to announce long-promised climate funding to help developing countries. Caution ahead of the major UN summit in Glasgow in November, known as Cop26, is justified and necessary.



But the focus has shifted remarkably in recent months to the need for urgent action. While many questions are still to be answered, major countries including the US and Japan have joined the EU and Britain in supporting green proposals that would have been difficult to imagine a few months ago.



This doesn’t apply to Australia, one of four guest nations at the talks. When Scott Morrison was asked in a post-summit media conference about a G7 declaration that public financing of unabated coal-fired power must stop this year, his first instinct was to stress that his government was not a signatory (he later added it had no plans to put money into coal generation at home).



Before the summit, some in the British government had hope that the guests – which also included India, South Korea and South Africa – might sign up to a “G7+” communique that strengthened the global climate push. Any thought of that was dropped in the lead-up after the gap on climate between the members and their guests widened as the major economies became more ambitious.



The G7 communique is worth a read. The leaders of the UK, US, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada describe climate change as an “existential threat”. They have committed to collectively cut emissions roughly in half between 2010 and 2030 – in the ballpark of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested developed countries would need to do to keep a post-industrial age temperature rise of 1.5C within reach.



They say dealing with the problem requires a “green revolution” that involves not only cutting emissions but funding global adaptation, halting and reversing biodiversity loss and creating jobs through both “policy and technological transformation”. The pledge on net zero emissions is now to reach it “as soon as possible and by 2050 at the latest”.



It means significant action before 2030 is vital. All G7 governments have increased their targets in recent months, reflecting a pledge in the Paris agreement to ratchet up commitments. The emissions reductions promised by the US, UK and EU are now double that proposed by the Morrison government. More policies are promised before Cop26.



While the rhetoric at the summit avoided the implicit criticism of recent months – when Morrison was refused a speaking slot at a British and French-run global ambition climate summit and described as being not on “the same page” on the issue by the Biden administration – it has left Australia more isolated from its closest allies.



Morrison did not increase the country’s emissions reduction commitments or promise action that would cut CO2 anytime soon. He continues to lean hard on debunked claims that Australia is doing more than other countries and suggests international allies have a history of not living up to climate commitments.



The latter point is repeated despite expert analysis finding that, in most cases, it isn’t true. Until recently, the real issue has been a spectacular lack of ambition in countries making commitments, not them failing to live up to what was promised. Australia is still stuck in the lack of ambition phase.



It bears repeating: the emissions reductions since 2005 that the Morrison government likes to boast of overwhelmingly happened when Labor was in power – mostly due to a drop in forest destruction in Queensland and a decline in native forestry. Cheap solar and wind are having some impact in electricity generation despite a lack of federal policy to support them, but coal still provides about two-thirds of power, and there has been no structural shift away from fossil fuels in transport, industry and mining.



The government is increasing subsidies to gas, including hundreds of millions of dollars allocated in last month’s budget, despite the International Energy Agency warning the world should no longer be investing in new gas fields if it hopes to keep open a “narrow window” to limit global heating to 1.5C. Morrison is due to give an opening address (by video) for an oil and gas industry conference hosted by the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association in Perth on Tuesday.



The sole area in which the government can make the case it is in step with the G7 is in the need for new technology. The communique promised a “technology-driven transition to net zero”, language that appears to line up with the coalition’s “technology not taxes” approach.





Scott Morrison inks G7 deals with Japan and Germany to develop lower-emissions technology

Read more

Australia is working on agreements to develop clean technology with several countries, including deals with Germany and Japan announced over the weekend. The former appears more developed, including a $50m taxpayer-funded commitment to work together on green hydrogen, an area that the Germans have already backed with billions of dollars. The Japanese deal appears focused on reducing emissions from fossil fuel production rather than backing zero-emissions technology.



Neither should be dismissed – new commercial solutions will be vital – but, with no timeframes or emissions reduction goals attached, they are hard to assess.



Meanwhile, green solutions already exist in many areas, notably electricity generation, transport, industrial efficiency, and commercial and residential heating and cooling. The G7 communique acknowledges this in emphasising the need for policies that cut emissions now in these and other areas.



Among the questions left after Morrison’s G7 appearance is whether the government will join the 100-plus countries that have already set a net zero emissions target for 2050.



For months, he has strongly resisted growing international pressure to do more, saying Australia will set its own path. There is no evidence that has changed. But the prime minister’s language continues to evolve in a way that suggests he understands the world has moved beyond a point where a 2050 net zero goal without anything to back it up is enough.



Speaking after the summit, Morrison told reporters it was already “very clear that we are moving towards net zero” and the “new energy economy is coming”.



Perhaps most interestingly, he volunteered he had a “very, very, very informative discussion” with the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, who he had previously met when Morrison was treasurer and Draghi the head of the European Central Bank. He said they discussed “the direction of financial markets, bond markets and how they are working and pricing in and positioning for the new energy economy” and concluded “they’re economic realities that Australia has to address”.



One interpretation of this is the prime minister increasingly understands the world is moving pretty fast and recognises that can’t be ignored forever. But what he plans to do about it in the short term, if anything, remains a mystery.



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