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Besides just batteries, renewable energy circles in China are just now starting to grasp what it's going to take to transport and recycle the gadzillions of sol

Besides just batteries, renewable energy circles in China are just now starting to grasp what it's going to take to transport and recycle the gadzillions of solar waste that's going to start rolling in around 2030. Some takes make it sound pretty dire. [1] [1] https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002631/the-dark-side-of-chinas-solar-boom- https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002631/the-dark-side-of-chin...

Brakenshire 8y ago
That is FUD. > Mary Hutzler, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research in Washington D.C., said that solar panels are manufactured using hazardous materials — including sulfuric acid and phosphine gas — making them difficult to recycle. They also contain toxic metals like lead, chromium, and cadmium, which can be harmful to humans and are likely to leak from electronic waste dumps into drinking water supplies. Chromium is only in CIGS, which is 0% of the market, Cadmium is only in CdTe, which is a few percent of the market and only manufactured in the US by First Solar. Lead is just in the solder, which is the same issue as with all electronics. How does the use of chemicals purely as part of the manufacturing process make the panel more difficult to recycle, if the material is not in the finished product? IER is a Koch funded nonsense.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  That particular quote as is makes no sense. I think the real statement is that solar panel RECYCLING requires sulfuric acid and phosphine gas. That would make more sense. 13.5 million cumulative tonnes of solar waste in China by 2050 is not FUD at all, that's a statement of success in solar deployment. Are you suggesting that recycling this magnitude of solar waste will be trivial, both environmentally and economically? The 30 year lifetime plus massive deployments leads logically to a recycling challenge that isn't often discussed. I'm not an expert in the field so I can't say enough to suggest it will be trivial or challenging. Gut feeling given those kinds of numbers is that it will be both challenging and expensive. Do you have better data?
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    The quote about chemicals makes no sense because it's just promoting fear by association. Phosphine can be used for n-type doping of amorphous silicon layers during certain cell production processes. It never leaves the manufacturing site. It's not used or produced in any module recycling process. Hutzler is smearing solar technology because his institute aims to promote fossil fuels and fight "climate alarmism." https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/tag/climate-alarmism/ https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/tag/climate-alarm... I think that the point about 13.5 million tons of solar waste in China by 2050 is fine by itself. That's still orders of magnitude less waste than would be produced by sourcing equivalent electricity from coal. For comparison, Georgia's Plant Bowen alone has 21 million tons of coal ash sitting in unlined pits and leaching into the water: https://www.southernenvironment.org/news-and-press/news-feed/georgia-power-commits-to-another-29-million-tons-in-coal-ash-cleanup https://www.southernenvironment.org/news-and-press/news-feed... Reading the pie chart from the Sixth Tone article, it looks like about 3/4 of the solar waste material is aluminum, glass, and steel. Those all have efficient, long-established recycling processes. The polymer backsheets and encapsulants, silicon cells, and minor metals used in cell contacts and wiring (copper, silver) are more difficult to deal with because of their heterogeneous nature. The only valuable part of that ~3.375 million tons of heterogenous waste is the copper and silver content. Silicon is low-value and non-hazardous. The polymers need to be treated as plastic waste. Like most plastic waste, they can't be effectively recycled.
    - acidburnNSA 8y ago
      Well scaring people away from renewables is pretty counter-productive to the decarbonizing cause so that was not my intent. I happened upon that article when reading something else earlier today and thought it might be relevant. Certainly coal is worse. We should just be careful to not replace one problem with another. Obviously in mass, coal will dominate. It's most a question of raw material availability or economics of recycling that matter for the vast expansion of energy harvesting we're talking about here. I'm glad that you as a knowledgeable person in the topic are not concerned about any negative implications of vast renewable buildout for electricity, transport, heating, and industry.

Brakenshire 8y ago

That is FUD. > Mary Hutzler, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research in Washington D.C., said that solar panels are manufactured using hazardous materials — including sulfuric acid and phosphine gas — making them difficult to recycle. They also contain toxic metals like lead, chromium, and cadmium, which can be harmful to humans and are likely to leak from electronic waste dumps into drinking water supplies. Chromium is only in CIGS, which is 0% of the market, Cadmium is only in CdTe, which is a few percent of the market and only manufactured in the US by First Solar. Lead is just in the solder, which is the same issue as with all electronics. How does the use of chemicals purely as part of the manufacturing process make the panel more difficult to recycle, if the material is not in the finished product? IER is a Koch funded nonsense.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
That particular quote as is makes no sense. I think the real statement is that solar panel RECYCLING requires sulfuric acid and phosphine gas. That would make more sense. 13.5 million cumulative tonnes of solar waste in China by 2050 is not FUD at all, that's a statement of success in solar deployment. Are you suggesting that recycling this magnitude of solar waste will be trivial, both environmentally and economically? The 30 year lifetime plus massive deployments leads logically to a recycling challenge that isn't often discussed. I'm not an expert in the field so I can't say enough to suggest it will be trivial or challenging. Gut feeling given those kinds of numbers is that it will be both challenging and expensive. Do you have better data?
- philipkglass 8y ago
  The quote about chemicals makes no sense because it's just promoting fear by association. Phosphine can be used for n-type doping of amorphous silicon layers during certain cell production processes. It never leaves the manufacturing site. It's not used or produced in any module recycling process. Hutzler is smearing solar technology because his institute aims to promote fossil fuels and fight "climate alarmism." https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/tag/climate-alarmism/ https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/tag/climate-alarm... I think that the point about 13.5 million tons of solar waste in China by 2050 is fine by itself. That's still orders of magnitude less waste than would be produced by sourcing equivalent electricity from coal. For comparison, Georgia's Plant Bowen alone has 21 million tons of coal ash sitting in unlined pits and leaching into the water: https://www.southernenvironment.org/news-and-press/news-feed/georgia-power-commits-to-another-29-million-tons-in-coal-ash-cleanup https://www.southernenvironment.org/news-and-press/news-feed... Reading the pie chart from the Sixth Tone article, it looks like about 3/4 of the solar waste material is aluminum, glass, and steel. Those all have efficient, long-established recycling processes. The polymer backsheets and encapsulants, silicon cells, and minor metals used in cell contacts and wiring (copper, silver) are more difficult to deal with because of their heterogeneous nature. The only valuable part of that ~3.375 million tons of heterogenous waste is the copper and silver content. Silicon is low-value and non-hazardous. The polymers need to be treated as plastic waste. Like most plastic waste, they can't be effectively recycled.
  - acidburnNSA 8y ago
    Well scaring people away from renewables is pretty counter-productive to the decarbonizing cause so that was not my intent. I happened upon that article when reading something else earlier today and thought it might be relevant. Certainly coal is worse. We should just be careful to not replace one problem with another. Obviously in mass, coal will dominate. It's most a question of raw material availability or economics of recycling that matter for the vast expansion of energy harvesting we're talking about here. I'm glad that you as a knowledgeable person in the topic are not concerned about any negative implications of vast renewable buildout for electricity, transport, heating, and industry.