The recycling of 'end-of-life' solar panels and wind turbines is set to become a major waste business in the climate tech industry.

• The Biden administration's push for renewable energy sources will result in the generation of significant amounts of waste in the renewable energy industries.
• By 2050, the total waste of wind turbines, including the steel tower and composite blades, which are typically 170 feet long, will amount to 2.2 million metric tons.
• Solar panels that are at the end of their life or are defective often end up in landfills because recycling them is more expensive than simply disposing of them.
• Solarcycle CEO Suvi Sharma states that while the company has excelled in creating solar energy that is both efficient and cost-effective, they have yet to focus on making it circular and addressing the issue of disposal at the end of its life.

The increasing significance of wind and solar energy in the U.S. power grid, as well as the increasing popularity of electric vehicles, are crucial in the country's efforts to decrease reliance on fossil fuels, decrease carbon emissions, and combat climate change.

As the renewable energy sector grows, it will produce significant amounts of waste as PV solar panels, wind turbines, and lithium-ion EV batteries reach the end of their lifecycles.

To avoid the negative consequences of not properly disposing of decommissioned coal mines, oil wells, and power plants, innovative startups are working to create a profitable circular economy that recovers, recycles, and reuses the core components of climate tech innovation.

Last year, wind and solar energy accounted for 13.6% of utility-scale electricity generated in the US, according to the EIA. This percentage is expected to increase as renewable energy continues to expand. Several leading utilities in the country have already surpassed this pace.

In 2022, the percentage of all-electric vehicles purchased in the US rose to 5.8% from 3.2% in 2021. With the Environmental Protection Agency's new tailpipe emissions limits and power plant rules, EV sales could capture a 67% market share by 2032, forcing more utilities to accelerate their power generation transition.

Solarcycle is a prime example of companies looking to solve the climate tech waste problem of the future. Since its launch in Oakland, California last year, it has constructed a recycling facility in Odessa, Texas, where it extracts 95% of the materials from end-of-life solar panels and reintroduces them into the supply chain. The company sells recovered silver and copper on commodity markets and glass, silicon, and aluminum to panel manufacturers and solar farm operators.

Solar is increasingly becoming the primary source of power generation, with 54% of new utility-scale electric-generating capacity in the U.S. this year coming from solar, according to an EIA report. However, this shift presents new challenges and opportunities. While we have made solar energy efficient and cost-effective, we have not yet focused on making it circular and addressing the end-of-life of panels, said Solarcycle CEO Suvi Sharma.

Keeping solar panels out of landfills

Solar panels have an average lifespan of 25 to 30 years, with over 500 million already installed in the country, ranging from a few on a residential home's rooftop to thousands in a commercial solar farm. The solar capacity is increasing at an average rate of 21% annually, resulting in the installation of tens of millions more panels. Between 2030 and 2060, approximately 9.8 million metric tons of solar panel waste are expected to accumulate, according to a 2019 study published in Renewable Energy.

In the future, the gap between the cost of recycling and dumping solar panels is expected to close, resulting in a decrease in the amount of defective or end-of-life panels ending up in landfills.

The market for recycled solar panel materials is predicted to expand rapidly in the coming years. According to a report by Rystad Energy, the value of these materials is expected to reach $2.7 billion by 2030, up from $170 million in 2020. By 2050, the market is projected to reach approximately $80 billion. The Department of Energy's National Renewable Laboratory (NREL) has found that with minimal government support, recycled materials can meet 30%-50% of solar manufacturing requirements in the U.S. by 2040.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the IRA both offer tax incentives and financial support for the production of solar panels and research on new solar technologies. These measures aim to reduce China's dominance in the global solar panel market, which currently accounts for over 80% of the industry, according to a recent report from the International Energy Agency.

First Solar, the largest solar panel manufacturer in the U.S., has been awarded $7.3 million in research funds to develop a new residential rooftop panel that is more efficient than current silicon or thin-film modules.

Since 2005, First Solar has operated an in-house recycling program, as stated in an email from chief product officer Pat Buehler. He emphasized that integrating circularity into their operations was crucial for sustainable business growth. Instead of extracting metals and glass from retired panels and manufacturing scrap, their recycling process focuses on closed-loop semiconductor recovery for use in new modules.

Massive wind turbines, blades are almost all recyclable

The wind energy industry in the U.S. has been steadily growing since the early 1980s, with nearly 72,000 utility-scale turbines installed nationwide, generating 10.2% of the country's electricity. However, the retirement of wind turbines presents a recycling challenge and business opportunities.

Despite the industry's slowdown due to supply chain issues, inflation, and rising costs over the past two years, wind turbine manufacturers and developers are hopeful that the situation has improved, thanks to the subsidies and tax credits for green energy projects in the IRA and the Biden administration's commitment to promoting offshore wind development.

While the typical lifespan of a wind turbine is around 20 years, most decommissioned turbines end up in landfills with retired solar panels. However, all components of a turbine, including the steel tower and composite blades, are recyclable, with some blades reaching lengths of over 350 feet.

Over the next five years, between 3,000 and 9,000 wind turbine blades will be retired in the US. After that, the number will increase to between 10,000 and 20,000 until 2040. By 2050, a total of 235,000 blades will be decommissioned, which translates to a cumulative mass of 2.2 million metric tons - equivalent to more than 60,627 fully loaded tractor trailers.

How the circular renewable energy economy works

Determined players in the circular economy vow to prevent waste from being wasted.

Carbon Rivers, a Knoxville-based company founded in 2019, has developed technology to shred discarded composite materials from various industries and convert them into reclaimed glass fiber through a pyrolysis process. This technology can be used for next-generation manufacturing of turbine blades, marine vessels, composite concrete, and auto parts. Additionally, the process harvests renewable oil and synthetic gas for reuse, said chief strategy officer David Morgan.

The most expensive part of the process is logistics, specifically the transportation of massive turbine blades and other composites over long distances by rail and truck.

Carbon Rivers plans to establish facilities in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Idaho in the next three years, in addition to existing facilities in Tennessee and Texas. These sites will be strategically located near wind farms and other feedstock sources. Additionally, the company aims to build five more facilities in the U.K. and Europe before expanding to South American and Asian markets.

To avoid contributing to landfill waste, wind turbine manufacturers are partnering with recycling companies. In December 2020, General Electric's Renewable Energy unit entered into a multi-year agreement with Veolia North America to recycle decommissioned blades from land-based GE turbines in the U.S.

In 2020, Veolia North America launched a recycling plant in Missouri, which has processed approximately 2,600 blades so far, according to Julie Angulo, senior vice president, technical and performance. She stated, "We are currently witnessing the first wave of blades that are 10 to 12 years old, but we anticipate that this number will increase year by year."

Veolia uses kiln co-processing to transform shredded blades and other composite materials into a fuel that it sells to cement manufacturers as an alternative to coal, sand, and clay. This process reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 27% and water consumption in cement production by 13%.

Angulo stated that cement manufacturers are interested in reducing their carbon emissions by moving away from coal, making them suitable partners for our efforts.

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy is currently producing fully recyclable blades for both its land-based and offshore wind turbines, with plans to make all of its turbines fully recyclable by 2040. Vestas Wind Systems has committed to producing zero-waste wind turbines by 2040 and has introduced a new solution that renders epoxy-based turbine blades to be broken down and recycled.

Electric vehicle lithium-ion battery scrap

Since the early 1990s, lithium-ion batteries have been used to power laptops, cell phones, and other consumer electronics. In recent years, they have also been used in electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage systems. As automakers increase production and build battery gigafactories, the focus on recycling the valuable innards of these batteries, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper, has shifted towards EVs. However, today's EV batteries have a lifespan of 10-20 years or 100,000-200,000 miles, so recyclers are primarily processing scrap from battery manufacturers.

Li-Cycle, a Toronto-based company founded in 2016, has developed a two-step technology that breaks down batteries and scrap into inert materials and then shreds them using a hydrometallurgy process to produce minerals that are sold back into the general manufacturing supply chain. To reduce transportation costs, Li-Cycle has strategically located four facilities in Alabama, Arizona, New York, and Ontario, where it deconstructs the materials. The company is currently constructing a massive facility in Rochester, New York, where the materials will be processed.

Li-Cycle's co-founder and CEO Ajay Kochhar stated that the company is on track to commission its Rochester facility at the end of this year. The construction of the facility has been funded by a $375 loan from the Department of Energy (DOE). Additionally, since going public, the company has raised approximately $1 billion in private deals.

Redwood Materials, founded in 2017 by JB Straubel, is developing a new approach to battery recycling outside of Reno, Nevada. The company uses hydrometallurgy to break down batteries and scrap, producing anode copper foil and cathode-active materials for making new EV batteries. However, due to the limited availability of feedstock, the nickel and lithium in its cathode products will only be about 30% recycled, with the remaining 70% coming from newly mined metals.

Redwood aims to produce 100 GWh/year of cathode-active materials and anode foil for one million EVs by 2025. By 2030, the company's goal is to scale to 500 GWh/year of materials, which would enable enough batteries to power five million EVs.

Redwood, a privately held company, has recently started construction on a second facility in Charleston, South Carolina, in addition to its existing one in Nevada. The company has raised over $1 billion and received a conditional commitment from the DOE for a $2-billion loan as part of the IRA. Last year, Redwood struck a multi-billion dollar deal with Tesla's battery supplier Panasonic and has also formed partnerships with Volkswagen Group of America, Toyota, Ford, and Volvo.

The company Ascend Elements, based in Westborough, Massachusetts, employs hydrometallurgy technology to extract cathode-active material primarily from battery manufacturing scrap and spent lithium-ion batteries. Its processing facility is situated in Covington, Georgia, which has attracted EV battery manufacturers such as SK Group in Commerce, EV maker near Rutledge, and Hyundai, which is constructing an EV factory outside of Savannah.

In October 2021, Ascend started building a second recycling facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with federal funds allocated for green energy initiatives. CEO Mike O'Kronley stated, "We have received two grant awards from the DOE under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law totaling approximately $480 million." Such federal investments, he added, "encourage infrastructure development in the US because about 96% of all cathode materials are produced in East Asia, particularly China."

To effectively combat climate change, it is crucial to establish a circular economy that recovers, recycles, and reuses end-of-life components from the renewable energy supply chain, which includes solar, wind, and EVs.

Garvin Heath, a senior energy sustainability analyst at NREL, emphasized the importance of considering the context of emerging technologies and understanding their entire lifecycle. He noted that the circular economy presents a valuable opportunity for industries to prioritize sustainability and environmental responsibility during the early stages of their growth.

Li-Cycle CEO Ajay Kochhar is a co-founder of the company. An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled his name.