States Weigh Making Industry Pay Millions For Solar Panel Waste

More states are considering who will foot the bill for recycling the surge of solar panel waste expected to materialize over the next couple of decades.

Estimates put the cost of recycling all the panels in a typical 100-megawatt utility system at as much as $11.2 million. Recycling panels for the nation’s largest solar farms, some of which have a 500-plus megawatt capacity, could run much higher.

Recycling one solar panel costs $15 to $45—significantly more than the $1 to $5 per-panel cost of sending it to a landfill, according to a US Department of Energy analysis.

At least eight states have laws on the books to study or regulate solar panel recycling, according to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory report. The requirements vary in stringency, with some setting hard rules and others setting up task forces to study the issue and make policy recommendations later.

Those efforts are in response to a big problem on the horizon. Panels have a roughly 25 to 30 year lifespan, with 87% of all panels having been installed over the last six years. That sets the stage for a coming wave of panels reaching their end stage by 2050.

Solar waste in the Americas is expected to reach around 2 million metric tons annually by 2050, a far leap from the roughly 2,500 metric tons produced in 2019, according to a BloombergNEF analysis.

The solar panel industry is relatively new, so panel volumes are manageable right now, said Taylor Curtis, a regulatory and policy analyst at NREL. “But that’s going to change,” Curtis said.

Washington Hatches Panel Rules

So far, Washington is the only state that requires manufacturers to collect and recycle solar panels at no cost to consumers. But other states, including California and Minnesota, are eyeing similar plans, according to NREL.

States often use extended producer responsibility (EPR) progams, which originated in Europe during the 1990s, to regulate the disposal of products like paint, electronics, and pharmaceuticals. But implementing them for solar panels specifically poses new challenges, said Albert Salvi, who supervises solid waste management in the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Washington in 2017 became the first state to pass an EPR program for solar panels. In 2025, manufacturers will be obligated to finance solar panel collection and recycling for both residential and utility grade projects.

Program specifics are still under design. But essentially, manufacturers will have to submit a plan to the ecology department outlining how they’ll fund and implement the takeback, transportation, and recycling of solar panels.

When the program officially starts two years from now, selling solar panels will require a state-approved plan to recycle or reuse at least 85% of them. Out-of-compliance manufacturers would first receive a written warning that gives them 30 days to submit required documents. After that, the ecology department could impose a fine of up to $10,000 per panel sale, according to the legislation.

Evelyn Butler, vice president of technical services for the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in an emailed statement that EPR laws “do not make sense” for the solar industry. Instead, practical end-of-life plans are the “best way to recycle panels reliably and affordably” without hindering solar development, she said.

SEIA, a nonprofit trade association whose membership spans 1,000 companies, is also “working toward additional recycling standards for the industry,” Butler said.

State agency employees like Salvi are quickly trying to figure out how to best prepare stakeholders for the law’s start date. One of the largest hurdles has been starting a dialogue with manufacturers, Salvi said.

“We have not received one plan from a manufacturer,” and we need those to move forward, he said. “We’re trying to get everybody back in the room.”

Three manufacturers and the Washington Solar Energy Industries Association didn’t respond to a request for comment, and one manufacturer, Silfab Solar Inc., declined to comment.

The hope is that mandating recycling will help spur more solar panel recycling businesses, which are still scarce in the US and will need to increase to meet upcoming recycling needs, Curtis said.

Right now, Washington is sending its decommissioned panels into Nevada, Texas, and Arizona, where the largest solar recycling plant in North America just opened. The freight charge is “a burden,” said Jill Krumlauf, solid waste planner for the Southwest region in Washington state’s ecology department.

“We’re really hoping that there will be a recycler that comes to Washington or close to Washington,” Salvi said.

California Preps Legislation

For larger, sunnier states with even more solar panels, planning how to manage waste is crucial.

EPA’s Region 9, which includes California, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawaii, is expected to generate the largest amount of solar panel waste in coming years, Endalkachew Sahle-Demessie, a senior EPA scientist, said during a Sept. 27 webinar.

“California’s been thinking about this particular issue for well over a decade,” said Rachel Machi Wagoner, CalRecycle’s director.

California Assemblymember Chris Ward (D) says he’s spending much of his fall refining AB 2, which would create a state EPR program for solar recycling. He says he’ll reintroduce the bill in January—it was held in committee earlier this year after its December 2022 unveiling.

“We want to make sure that we have defined pathways to avoid” panels ending up in landfills, “especially with the exponential growth that we’ve had and we’ll continue to have here in California,” he said.

So far, manufacturers and other industry players are cooperating, Ward said.

“There’s a number of issues that continue to be worked on, but all these issues are solvable,” he said. “Industry being a really strong partner, they want to be able to find that framework that works” for them.

What’s to Come

Niagara County, N.Y.,—the only government ahead of Washington state in implementing a solar EPR program—could show states what’s to come if they pass their own product stewardship laws.

The county’s rules went into effect last year and require manufacturers to explain how they’ll finance and carry out panel recycling. But so far, only one manufacturer out of dozens that do business in the area has submitted a plan, said Dawn Timm, the county’s environmental coordinator. Enforcing the law is difficult, though, since regulators don’t want to discourage solar installations with punitive measures, she said.

“EPR at a local county level is challenging” due to staffing resources and general program complexities, Timm said. That’s why state governments are better suited to steward them, she said.

In New York state, legislators have previously tried and failed several times to pass manufacturer recycling requirements.

Minnesota is in a similar situation. The state’s pollution control agency sponsored a product stewardship bill in 2022, but it didn’t pass, and neither did a similar bill in 2014, according to NREL. But this year, the legislature greenlighted HF 2310, which created a task force that will develop recommendations for statewide solar panel recycling.

The report and resulting policy advice, which could include an EPR program, is due to the legislature in January 2025.

“Our future depends on solar and wind, and we need to do it right,” said John Gilkeson, a principal planner in the state’s pollution control agency. “We don’t want them in the landfill at all.”