Solar panel recycling company Solarcycle has announced ambitious plans to build a new facility to ensure crucial materials can be reused.
According to Electrek, Cedartown, Georgia, will be home to the factory, which will come at a cost of $344 million. It's just another example of recycling plants for sustainable technologies being built in a southern United States state.
Solarcycle, which has also signed a deal with QCells to provide the recovered material for use in new panels, will manufacture new solar glass from old panels at the site, making it one of the first companies in the U.S. to do so.
Electrek reported the facility will be able to make five to six gigawatts of solar glass a year, and it should be fully operational sometime in 2026.
"Recycling solar panels can contribute to a domestic supply of materials essential to the production of new solar panels, including glass, silicon, and valuable metals such as silver, copper, and aluminum," per the Solarcycle website.
The company also says the process is 95% efficient in terms of value extraction, noting the industry standard is below 50%.
"[The critical elements in solar panels], if they're recycled properly, can be used again," Solarcycle co-founder and CEO Suvi Sharma said in a video detailing the company's intentions. "So rather than mining that from the ground, we can mine these from old solar panels."
In addition to saving precious resources and reducing the environmental damage of mining, recycling solar panels keeps them out of landfills, where they would contribute to the production of the planet-warming gas methane.
Qcells, meanwhile, expects to produce 8.4 gigawatts of panels this year at its facility in Dalton, Georgia. Electrek observed it was one of the first factories built following the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act, a government policy that encourages the development, manufacture, and purchase of energy-efficient technologies.
Solar power is vital to supply clean, pollution-free energy to citizens as we transition away from polluting dirty fuel. Recycling solar panels just makes the process even more sustainable.
"One of the biggest concerns about solar is how d'ya deal with them when they lose significant production after about 30 years," one commenter on Electrek's report said. "This is good news!"
"Great to hear of the work being done on recycling solar panels, a very important step as they become so integral in the way we generate our electricity," another added.
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