The Western Australian government has allocated AU$17.8 million (US$12.7 million) in its 2026-27 State Budget to build the state’s capacity to recycle solar modules and embedded batteries, under its Remade in WA programme.
The AU$17.8 million will be divided across three streams. AU$13 million will establish new collection, transport and processing pathways for end-of-life solar modules from both households and utility-scale solar PV power plants.
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AU$3 million will support local governments in rolling out embedded battery collection at facilities, covering batteries from eRideables and household devices, with the remaining AU$1.8 million to support ongoing programme delivery.
The AU$13 million solar module component is designed to lay the foundations for a new local recycling industry by unlocking private-sector investment, creating jobs, and ensuring more of the value from clean energy infrastructure is retained in Western Australia.
Environment Minister Matthew Swinbourn said the programmes aim to reduce waste to landfill, recover valuable materials, and improve management of complex waste streams.
Energy and Decarbonisation and Manufacturing Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson framed the investment as preparation for growing end-of-life infrastructure demand.
“More solar panels and batteries are coming into use every day, and we need systems to manage them at end-of-life, reducing waste and supporting a circular economy,” Sanderson said.
Federal and research momentum is building
The Western Australia announcement follows the federal government’s AU$24.7 million national solar module recycling pilot, announced in January 2026, which will establish up to 100 pilot collection sites nationwide to address the growing challenge of end-of-life solar PV module management.
The programme aims to develop a sustainable national solution to manage the growing volume of retired solar modules as Australia’s solar fleet ages, with the federal government noting that only 17% of solar modules are currently recycled in Australia, despite the potential to unlock up to AU$7.3 billion in benefits through reduced waste and material reuse.
The research infrastructure supporting that ambition is also taking shape. As PV Tech reported earlier this year, UNSW Sydney opened Australia’s first dedicated solar module recycling research facility, the ARC Hub for Photovoltaic Solar Panel Recycling and Sustainability, backed by AU$5 million in Australian Research Council funding.
Hub director Professor Yansong Shen said there was an urgent need for domestic recycling capacity as many of Australia’s 3.5 million solar installations approach retirement, with PV waste forecast to reach 100,000 tonnes annually by 2030.
Speaking exclusively to PV Tech Premium, Shen warned that without improved recycling infrastructure, silver, a critical input in solar cell manufacturing, faces supply constraints of growing severity, with current consumption trajectories raising the prospect of supply limitations within years if recovery rates remain low.
Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the Global Solar Council (GSC), recently spoke with PV Tech Premium, noting that the time to address solar recycling is now.
“Solar recycling has to be dealt with today, for the solar panels being installed now,” Dunlop emphasised. “Due to our nature as a low-cost form of electronics with an extremely long lifespan – sometimes 30+ years – recycling has to be paid for at the point of purchase rather than at the point of disposal.”
Western Australia’s positioning
Western Australia’s state government has framed the Remade in WA initiative as both an environmental and economic opportunity, pointing to the state’s existing metals processing and refining industry as a foundation for building a domestic solar recycling sector.
The state hosts major aluminium, copper, and lithium processing operations, giving it the industrial base to handle, at scale, the material streams recovered from end-of-life modules.
The Western Australia allocation complements rather than duplicates the federal pilot, which is focused on building national data on collection logistics, transport costs and processing economics before the government moves to a permanent product stewardship framework.
It is also designed to establish the state’s own collection and processing pathways independently, with an eye to retaining material value domestically rather than exporting modules for processing elsewhere.
The Approach to Market for the federal pilot administrator closed in April 2026, with an appointment expected once that process is finalised.
