Submission to the Inquiry into Solar Panel Reuse and Recycling in Australia

Recycling solar panels directly reduces domestic waste-to-landfill streams and could enable long-term potential benefits across multiple environmental, technological and strategic imperatives.

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While waste from solar panels is a relatively small issue compared with managing waste from some other forms of energy generation, recycling directly reduces domestic waste-to-landfill streams and could enable long-term potential benefits across multiple environmental, technological, and strategic imperatives.

The Australian Government has an opportunity to coordinate its approach to end-of-lifecycle solar panel management while this potential industry is still in its infancy, not only reducing waste but allow for critical minerals to be reused. This submission focuses on the inquiry’s Terms of Reference concerning potential benefits of resource recovery from solar panels, the state of technology and markets for solar panel recycling, barriers to recycling solar panels at scale and policy options to overcome these challenges.

ATSE makes the following recommendations:

Recommendation 1: Integrate solar panel recycling into the Critical Minerals Strategy.

Recommendation 2: Emphasise government support beyond the National Solar Panel Recycling Pilot Program as contingent on facilities’ capacity to demonstrate independent sustainability and operational integrity.

Recommendation 3: Establish a solar panel product stewardship scheme.

Recommendation 4: Scale up successful programs to increase the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skilled workforce to support the viability of the solar recycling industry.

Recommendation 5: Institute embedded design-for-recyclability standards for imports.

Recommendation 6: Create a national material inventory and traceability framework for solar panel fabrication.

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