Veolia unveils state-of-the-art PV panel recycling plant in France

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The French environmental services provider Veolia has partnered with PV Cycle-a not-for-profit take-back and waste management body to open a new PV recycling facility in France. The solar panel recycling facility will be located in Rousset in the Bouches-du-Rhône of southern France. The contract allows Veolia to operate the facility for a period of four years, through its subsidiary Triade Electronique.

The new recycling facility is expected to recover nearly 1,400 tonnes of photovoltaic material per year by end of this year. The recovery volumes are expected to touch 4,000 tonnes by 2021, when the four-year contract is supposed to come to an end. The secondary raw materials recovered by the facility will be used in various other sectors including aluminum, glass, copper etc., These materials will be re-injected into respective industries, based on principles of circular economy, in line with the sustainability roadmap set by the company for 2020.

According to Nicolas Defrenne, chief executive of PV Cycle France, this is the first unit dedicated to recycling used photovoltaic panels. The plant is expected to recover nearly 96% of materials and substantially reduce the environmental impact of the collection process, he added. Meantime, Bernard Harambillet, CEO Waste Solutions for Veolia in France noted that the contract demonstrates the company’s ability to convince key recycling players by offering innovative solutions. The contract is just the beginning of a long-term collaboration with PV Cycle, Harambillet added.

Incidentally, publication of the latest revision of the EU waste legislation makes producers of solar photovoltaic panels to be responsible for disposal and recycling of modules that are sold in EU member states. As per rough estimates, nearly 55,000 tonnes of PV panels, totaling 6.8 G, were installed in France during 2016. The effort undertaken by France’s Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy is expected to take the total installed capacity within the country to 20.2 GW by 2020.

Recycling PV panels at their end-of-life can unlock a large stock of raw materials and other valuable components. The recovered material injected back into the economy can serve for the production of new PV panels or be sold into global commodity markets, thus increasing the security of future raw material supply. The recovered raw materials could cumulatively yield a value of around $450 million by 2030. The recoverable value could witness phenomenal jump to nearly $15 billion by 2050.

A recent research report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) had predicted huge volume growth for solar photovoltaic (PV) panel recycling over the next 30 years. As per the report, the solar panel recycling market is likely to be worth $15 billion by 2050. The global installed PV capacity reached 222 gigawatts (GW) at the end of 2015 and is expected to rise to 4,500 GW by 2050. Given an average panel lifetime of 30 years, large amounts of annual waste are anticipated by the early 2030s.