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Solar Panel Waste Management Regulations

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Introduction

  • The use of solar energy is important to the earth and its capacity had reached 400 GW by 2017 and is expected to increase to 4500 GW in 2050.
  • Though the use of solar energy is increasing, these panels have a short lifespan of 25years which is likely to increase waste to approximately 4% to 14% by 2030 (Chowdhury et al., 2020).

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Solar Waste Regulations

  • PV-specific collection, recovery and recycling targets. In this regulation, the waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) tasks producers of PV panels to fund their recycling and collection in Europe (Chowdhury, 2020).
  • Recycling this waste is not only important to the environment but also helps producers to reuse the material for the production of other panels (Internal Energy Agency, 2016).

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Major Goals Of The Regulation

  • The regulation is meant to establish legislations to manage the treatment of waste
  • To conserve the environment and at the same time protect the health of human beings through efficient waste management, recycling and recovery.

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Regulated Material/ Behavior

  • The regulation governs the reuse of solar waste
  • It holds the producers accountable for the PV panels after the end of life to enable them produce products that can be reused
  • To promote eco-friendly products through establishing common environmental standards (Section 4 waste management legislation ,2005)

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Regulated Material/behavior

  • It encourages member states to promote similar or tougher laws related to WEEE.
  • It encourages minimization of hazardous components used in making electronics (section 4 waste management legislation, 2005)

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Type Of Measurement Used to Define the Problem

The complexity of this assessment results from the RCRA to gauge the amount of toxic material present in a particular solar panel. Therefore, it is the producers responsibility to measure the amount of hazard it can inflict by examining characteristics like ignitability, reactivity, corrosively and toxicity.

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Type Of Measurement Used To Define The Problem

  • To examine this, toxicity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) is carried out and when panels fail in this examination, they are declared hazardous by RCRA.

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Reasons Why This Received A Separate Regulation

  • This is because solar panels are not highly toxic to the environment. They are able to produce energy without emitting dangerous products to the environment.
  • However, these panels require disposal after they have reached obsolescence. Since they are made of different material, a TCLP test is carried out to find out the toxic characteristics .

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General Information on where this regulation is applied

  • EPA revised the cross-air pollution rule in 2021 to improve the air quality of Americans

(EPA, 2022)

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Other States Enforcing The Solar Waste Management Law

  • France in August 2014 WEEE law tasks all producers of PV modules to fund the collection, treatment and recycling of their waste. To get a commerce license, this scheme must first be approved by the ministry of environment.

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How This Regulation Is Controversial

  • Although the regulations focus on recycling of these solar products, a few products can actually be reused and it can only be done at a small scale and only a few products can be redeemed from waste living out the most important raw materials (Cole et al, 2019).

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Results For Its Implementation

This regulation is aimed at ;

  • Improving waste collection
  • Secondary source of raw materials such as copper, gold and more
  • Reduced carbon emissions
  • Reducing environmental impact of waste (Cole, 2019)

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Implementation

  • E-waste management

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Example of Its Application On Compass

  • The case of compass and how the regulation is implemented

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References

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