Federal parliament launches inquiry into solar panel reuse and recycling

Federal parliament has launched an inquiry into solar panel reuse and recycling, just weeks after the Albanese government announced a $25 million pilot program to establish up to 100 used panel collection sites across the country.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water officially adopted the inquiry on Wednesday, following a referral from federal environment minister Murray Watt, and put out a call for written submissions to guide its terms of reference.

The move follows the recent release of a Productivity Commission report – actually completed last August – that revealed only 17 per cent of discarded rooftop solar panels are recycled, with the remainder either stockpiled, dumped in landfill or exported for re-use.

The inquiry will examine the scale of the waste challenge that looms on the flip-side of the nation’s huge solar success, and explore the range of opportunities that could come from recovering valuable materials from end‑of‑life panels.

The committee will also assess existing disposal practices, comparing the economic and environmental impacts of reuse, versus recycling, and landfill, and consider what is needed to support a sustainable and circular solar industry.

Committee chair, the federal member for Braddon in northwest Tasmania, Anne Urquhart, said formulating an end-of-life plan for solar infrastructure was critical.

“To progress Australia’s transition to a circular economy, the barriers to reusing and recycling solar panels at scale need to be identified through close collaboration with industry, academia, and subject matter experts,” Urquhart said in a statement.

Alongside the inquiry, the Albanese government has also launched a $25 million pilot program to establish up to 100 solar panel collection sites across the country, to deal with one of the biggest hurdles to reuse and recovery – the cost of getting the panels from the roof to the recyclers.

The initial program will focus on rooftop solar panels, with the issue now at a critical point given that in some states more than one third of new installations are now replacing pre-existing solar systems.

The goal of the pilot is to make it financially interesting for the industry to recycle the panels – and then in future, EV batteries as well.

“Currently, neither solar PV systems nor EV batteries are managed in a consistent or comprehensive way once they are considered to have reached their end of life,” the PC report said.

“In Australia, the majority of end-of-life PV systems are sent to landfill or discarded in shredder floc, with some illegally dumped on roadsides or in bushland.

“Though some private recycling services exist in Australia (for example, Sircel, PV Industries, Ecoactiv), only 17% of solar panel components are recycled (specifically the aluminium frame and junction box), with the remaining 83% of (valuable) materials treated as waste.

“This is largely due to the cost barrier of recycling solar panels, which is approximately six times the cost of sending them to landfill.”

You can read the Terms of Reference for the inquiry here. Written submissions addressing the terms of reference must be submitted by March 27. Details on how to make a submission, can be found on the Committee’s website.