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Maybe this isn’t a problem, but I am curious about how and where all those solar cells and batteries will be disposed at the end of their usefulness?
by option 7y ago
Maybe this isn’t a problem, but I am curious about how and where all those solar cells and batteries will be disposed at the end of their usefulness?
- tathougies 7y agosolar panels (the panels themselves) are made of silicon, which is sand, so aren't a huge concern.
- jillesvangurp 7y agoIt's pretty much a non issue. Battery recycling is going to be a great business once currently produced batteries start reaching their rather long end of life. We're in a weird situation right now where we are producing vastly more than just a few years ago so the recycling market is lagging the production market by about 10-15 years or so. However, lithium is easily recovered and the incentives for recovering it are very high given how scarce and expensive this stuff is. Solar recycling is much less of an issue since we're mostly talking about silicon. There's probably enough precious metals involved that recycling them after a few decades is going to be a thing. But compared to the extremely dirty business that is coal mining this is a complete non issue.