Commonwealth, state and territory governments have agreed to progress work towards a national product stewardship scheme for solar panels, ensuring they are managed from start to end of life.
At Friday's meeting of the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council in Sydney, NSW presented a paper advocating a national mandated scheme to prevent solar panels ending up in landfill, instead directing them towards remanufacture or recycling. NSW is already developing a mandated stewardship program for batteries.
Annual solar panel waste volumes in Australia are predicted to nearly double over the next five years, from 59,340 tonnes in 2025 to 91,165 tonnes in 2030. The surge in waste is expected to be greatest in metropolitan cities from domestic use, with volumes beginning to grow in regional areas from large-scale solar facilities after 2030.
Energy Ministers recognised increasing calls for improved end-of-life management of solar panels, including those at large-scale facilities. Many solar panels are disposed of well before the end of their useful life and typically end up in landfill, stockpiled, or exported.
More than 95% of a solar panel is recyclable and contains valuable materials, including aluminium, glass, copper, silver and silicon, which can be beneficially recovered and reused.
The Smart Energy Council estimates that around one-third of solar panels could be re-used instead of being thrown away. This could contribute up to 24 gigawatts of energy by 2040, enough to power six million homes a year.
Energy Ministers agreed that NSW will lead preliminary work, together with other jurisdictions, in drawing up a Regulatory Impact Statement.
The draft will help the Government evaluate options for a national mandatory product stewardship scheme that could catalyse a national recycling and reuse sector for solar panels and their batteries.
The Commonwealth is also supporting low-cost recycling technologies for solar PV through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, to help support the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of industry approaches to solar product stewardship.
Minister for Energy and the Environment, Penny Sharpe said:
"We are proud to be leading the charge to create a unified approach to solar panel waste management and recycling.
"This work builds on the momentum of our nation-leading reform on batteries, and the new legislation already in place in NSW to enable a mandatory product stewardship scheme - ensuring suppliers take responsibility for the safe design, recycling and disposal of their products."
Smart Energy Council CEO, John Grimes said:
"It's been a decade since the federal government acknowledged solar panels going into landfill was a problem. Now, four million panels are coming off roofs a year with less than 5% being recycled.
"The time for talk has passed, an immediate first step is a national solar stewardship pilot to keep the industry alive and inform the Regulatory Impact Statement.
"The Smart Energy Council welcomes the restated focus from governments on the critical need for stewardship of solar PV, and particularly acknowledges the efforts of the NSW government for leading on this.'
Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union NSW/ACT State Secretary Brad Pidgeon said:
"A national solar panel stewardship scheme is a major opportunity for Australian jobs.
"Remanufacturing and recycling panels here means more onshore work in the renewable energy supply chain instead of shipping valuable materials offshore or losing them as waste."
