The rooftop solar revolution has slashed power bills and emissions, but behind the good news story is a growing waste problem - in need of an urgent solution.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00So, in Australia, we have about 4 million households that have installed solar.
00:09Then when you also include solar that's used for commercial purposes and large-scale solar,
00:16like solar farms, that equates to about 150 to 200 million solar panels installed across Australia.
00:27And what's happening is that even though solar panels can last up to 30 years,
00:33because newer technology has come online, including batteries,
00:37what some people are choosing to do is to upgrade to that newer technology.
00:43And particularly, the industry says, when people are also installing a battery,
00:48that households are choosing to upgrade to larger, more efficient solar panels.
00:56So, unfortunately, the problem is we only actually recycle about 10% of those solar panels.
01:06So, at the moment, we've got about 4 million solar panels being decommissioned every year.
01:12And the industry is warning that that figure could double, so to about 8 million solar panels decommissioned a year.
01:22And that figure is only based on solar uptake.
01:25That doesn't even include this fresh wave of forecast solar panels that are set to be decommissioned as people take up batteries.
01:34Let's have a listen to the Smart Energy Council's Darren Johannesson.
01:40In a solar module, there are metals that are in short supply, copper and silver.
01:45And in fact, the silver that's contained inside solar modules equates to, in its totality, Australia's biggest silver mine.
01:55So, landfilling these modules is wasting critical resources.
02:00So, Rianna, why aren't we recycling the panels?
02:04Basically, because at the moment, the cost and logistical challenges that are involved with recycling solar panels are too great for consumers and solar installers.
02:19So, we do have seven active solar recyclers here in Australia at the moment, but several have gone bust in recent years.
02:31And that's because there's not a constant supply of solar panels that can be recycled.
02:37So, what's happening at the moment is that the industry is being undercut by scrap metal dealers
02:44and also by exporters that actually pay consumers and installers for the panels, whereas the solar recyclers can't afford to do that, they say.
02:56Now, let's have a listen to solar recycler James Pedersick in Western Sydney.
03:01The biggest question that we get asked is around certainty of feedstock and the supply of solar panels that we receive.
03:07And without that certainty of feedstock, it's really hard to give an investor confidence to invest in our business.
03:13So, what's the solution, Rianna?
03:17Well, there seems to be a pretty united industry on this front.
03:21They say that the solution is simple and long overdue.
03:25And that is for the federal government to get on with introducing a national product stewardship scheme for solar panels.
03:34Now, basically what that means is it's a mandatory national recycling scheme, which would raise money by charging a levy on importers and manufacturers of solar panels.
03:46And that money would then go into a fund which would help make recycling solar panels more viable, because at the moment there's quite a big gap there.
03:56Now, the industry has been waiting almost a decade for this to happen.
04:00The federal government has done a lot of talking about this, but we're yet to see them commit to a timeline.
04:08And for that, I think we've been doing a lot of talking about that.
04:10So, for that, we're always trying to clean up what's something that looks like.
04:12And you're doing an environmental policy.
04:14I think we're certainly not going into a season of human power.
04:16So, we're also trying to learn how to improve the system of solar panels.
04:19We're not going to be doing anything at this time.
04:20But since we perché, we're starting to see the wind and air that we're doing, you know,
04:23we're trying to see the wind that we have to do, and to know the things that we're doing...
04:24I think it's important to, as I think we're doing, to know how to do that.