California's Growing Solar Panel Waste Poses Environmental Risk Due to Lack of Safe Disposal Options

What’s the story?

• California’s push for rooftop solar panels has created a growing environmental hazard as panels reach the end of their useful life and end up in landfills across the Golden State, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.
• The state of California created a program in 2006 that was intended to promote green energy by incentivizing homeowners to put solar panels (aka photovoltaic cells) on their roofs. The program, known as the California Solar Initiative, was administered by the California Public Utilities Commission and issued about $3.3 billion in grants for rooftop solar panels installed by 1.3 million recipients.
• While the program has helped increase the state’s share of solar power to about 15% of California’s portfolio, it lacked a comprehensive plan for disposing of the panels that would allow useful materials to be recycled and toxic substances to be kept out of landfills, where they can seep into groundwater and cause contamination.
• About 80% of typical solar panels are made of recyclable materials but the process of breaking them down to allow the recovery of glass, silver, and silicon is extremely difficult so only 1-in-10 solar panels are recycled, according to industry estimates. 
• With a growing number of solar panels reaching the end of their useful lifecycle, which is typically about 25 years, many are ending up in California landfills where toxic heavy metals from the solar panels like selenium and cadmium can contaminate groundwater. Natalie Click, a doctoral student who studies the issue at the University of Arizona, told the LA Times:

“People just don’t realize that there are toxic materials in those electronics, that it’s fine if it’s just sitting in a box in your house. But once it gets crushed and put into the landfill, a lot of those toxic chemicals and materials are going to leak into your groundwater.”

• As the number of solar panels headed to the dump rises, regulators and panel manufacturers have recognized that they lack the capacity to deal with the upcoming surge of solar panels hitting the waste stream.
• A company based in Phoenix, Arizona, called We Recycle Solar breaks down panels to recycle useful materials and dispose of toxic metals and gets most of its panels trucked in from California. However, it doesn’t have a facility in California because the state’s permitting system for dealing with toxic materials is too onerous, according to We Recycle Solar Vice President AJ Orben.
• Orben told the LA Times that the economics of the solar panel recycling process, which involves highly specialized equipment in addition to complex regulatory requirements due to the hazardous materials involved, only yields about $2 to $4 of useful materials. 
• Given the significant labor costs involved, that leaves little economic case for recycling solar panels even on a large scale. Research by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory last year found that it costs between $1 and $2 to send a solar panel to a landfill but about $20 to $30 to recycle it, while repairs to extend its useful life were even more expensive at $65 per solar panel.
• Some have called for the adoption of programs modeled after European regulations that require solar panel manufacturers to finance end-of-life recycling for their panels. To date, Washington is the only state with such a law, although it won’t be implemented until 2025. 
• It’s unclear what sort of impact building in the costs of end-of-life recycling into the solar panel production chain will have on the industry, which has been heavily reliant on taxpayer subsidies in its growth.
• Some action is also being taken at the local level. The City of Santa Monica entered into a public-private partnership with the California Product Stewardship Council that surveyed local residential solar owners and found many were unaware of what to do with end-of-life panels and called installers for help. Drew Johnstone, a sustainability analyst for Santa Monica, told the LA Times:

“We did find that the solar installers were the best contact for us to learn about how many decommissioned panels were in our region. Some contractors did end up just having to pile them in their warehouses, because there’s no good solution for where to bring them…

It’s going to be a really large issue in a number of years, so it would behoove local governments, county, state, and it can go federal too, to have a plan in place for all these panels that will reach their end of life in 10 to 15 years.”

— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: iStock.com / nattrass)