Solar PV manufacturer Canadian Solar has entered into a partnership with US-based PV recycling firm Solarcycle.
Under the agreement, Canadian Solar will serve as Solarcycle’s original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partner, while the recycling firm will be Canadian Solar’s preferred recycling partner in the US.
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Suvi Sharma, CEO and co-founder at Solarcycle, said: “By including upfront recycling services as an add-on to the price of a solar module, Canadian Solar is helping to move the entire industry forward to ensure that we are truly sustainable, from cradle-to-cradle. We will look back on their leadership in this moment as one of the key strategies the solar industry used to embed our core values into our core operations.”
Increased interest in PV recycling
This is the latest partnership signed by Solarcycle, which continues to ramp up its recycling offers in the US. Last month, the company partnered with renewables service provider RNWBL to recycle and reuse solar panels under RNWBL’s commercial and industrial operations.
Earlier this year, Solarcycle inked deals with solar manufacturers Silfab Solar and Qcells in the US. The deal with Silfab Solar will see recycled solar glass from Solarcycle’s Georgia facility, which it is currently building, used at the manufacturer’s solar cell and module assembly plant in South Carolina.
The deal with Qcells, on the other hand, would cover its “decommissioned, owned and installed solar panels in the United States,” with the materials recovered from the modules being reused for the domestic solar supply chain.
There has been growing interest in solar recycling lately; last week, the government of the Australian state of Queensland unveiled a recycling scheme that is expected to prevent 26 tonnes of waste from PV projects from entering landfills. The initiative was first unveiled in April this year with a funding of A$5.5 million (US$3.7 million).
In Australia it has been estimated that around 1.4 million solar PV modules are expected to reach their end-of-life in 2025 across the country.
Indeed, PV Tech Premium spoke last year with Solarcycle in a two-part article about the scalability of solar panel recycling and how the company aims to reach landfill parity.
