Danish renewables developer Ørsted has signed a recycling partnership agreement with Solarcycle to process and recycle the entirety of the PV modules in its US portfolio.
Solarcycle, a US-based specialist PV recycling company, will process all of the decommissioned modules from Ørsted’s US project portfolio at their Texas facility. Ørsted currently has three US solar facilities operational or under construction, and unveiled plans in January to develop another 470MW Texas plant.
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According to information on its website, the three projects currently in its portfolio will constitute over 2 million solar panels once operational. All of the projects have come online in the last three years, and average module lifespans sit between 20-25 years.
Ørsted also said that it was committing to recycle all of the modules from its entire global portfolio, but specifics of partnerships or agreements were not defined.
“We want to create a world that runs entirely on green energy, and we want to do it in a sustainable way,“ said Ingrid Reumert, senior vice president and head of global stakeholder relations at Ørsted. “Addressing the most critical waste problem of the solar industry, while mitigating social and environmental impacts in the supply chain, is essential to doing so.”
Solarcycle focuses on high-value recycling, extracting valuable materials such as silver and copper for reuse. The alternative method focuses more generally on recycling the glass, aluminium framing and other more ubiquitous, high-volume materials in the panel and often offers less financial return for the process.
PV Tech Premium spoke with Solarcycle recently about the scale of the recycling issue looming for the PV industry, and the potential routes to solving it. The company recently received US$30 million in Series A funding to expand its Texas facility, as well as a further US$1.5 million research grant from the US Department of Energy.
It signed a similar recycling framework agreement with AES Corporation for its US modules last month.
In the coming years, billions of panels will be deployed and billions are already out on solar farms across the world; the earliest installed panels are reaching the end of their lives and as technology and efficiencies advance more and more panels may be decommissioned by asset owners looking to repower their sites to improve LCOE.
Reumert said: “With this global solar commitment, Ørsted is leveraging its position as a leader in sustainability and renewable energy to incentivise the creation of a market for – the recycling of solar panels – and with the SOLARCYCLE partnership, we’re taking the first tangible steps to ensure that critical materials needed for green energy will be reused or recycled.”
The most recent edition of our downstream journal, PV Tech Power 35, features a deep dive into recycling concerns in the PV industry.
