{"id":1539702,"date":"2025-06-03T22:25:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T02:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1539702"},"modified":"2025-06-03T22:25:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T02:25:00","slug":"wasting-away-in-wind-and-solarville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wasting-away-in-wind-and-solarville\/1539702\/","title":{"rendered":"Wasting Away In Wind-And-Solarville"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wasting Away In Wind-And-Solarville<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

By James Varney and RealClearInvestigations.com,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

While green advocates commonly use the terms renewable, sustainable<\/strong>, and net zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that\u00a0much of the waste from solar panels<\/a>\u00a0and wind turbines is ending up in landfills.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals\u2014not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines\u2014pose no threat current to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more of a challenge in the years ahead as the\u00a0500 million solar panels<\/a>\u00a0and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are decommissioned and replaced.<\/p>\n

Greens insist that reductions in carbon emissions will more than compensate for increased levels of potentially toxic garbage; others fret that renewable energy advocates have not been forthright about their lack of eco-friendly plans and the technology to handle the waste.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody planned on this, nobody had a plan to get rid of them, nobody planned for closure,\u201d<\/strong><\/em> said Dwight Clark, whose company, Solar E Waste Solutions, recycles solar panels. \u201cNobody thought this through.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discussion about what to do with worn-out solar and wind equipment is another topic usually elided in Net Zero blueprints, which often focus on the claimed benefits of projects while discounting or ignoring the costs. As\u00a0RealClearInvestigations previously reported<\/a>\u00a0regarding the lack of plans for acquiring the massive amounts of land for solar and wind farms needed to achieve net zero, the math can get fuzzy, and the numbers cited most frequently are those rosiest for renewables.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been either silent, or incoherent\u2014or just hand-wave that we should recycle all this stuff without telling us how,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>said Mark Mills, executive director of the\u00a0National Center on Energy Analytics<\/a>. In the headlong effort to make solar and wind seem as inexpensive as possible, they have not included fees that address the eventual cost of disposal, which could leave taxpayers holding the bag.<\/p>\n

Some renewable supporters acknowledge Mills\u2019 point.\u00a0The Alliance for Affordable Energy<\/a>, which supports government-funded research on recycling panels and turbines, said the \u201ccircular economy\u201d Mills referred to has yet to materialize.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the existing energy infrastructure, a lot of end-of-life questions have never been addressed,\u201d the Alliance\u2019s executive director, Logan Burke, told RCI. \u201cIt may be that those costs have to be embedded in the front-end, but somehow we need to make the market circular. How do we find that market at the end of their useful life?\u201d<\/p>\n

Just how many panels the U.S. will dispose of or retire each year is also unclear. No clearing house keeps track of national figures, according to Meng Tao, an energy engineering professor at Arizona State University and a consultant on renewable waste issues.<\/p>\n

The estimates can vary widely. Solar panels generally have a life expectancy of 25 years, but factors like damage and system upgrades make the number of panels coming out of circulation each year impossible to ascertain. In 2021, the\u00a0National Renewable Energy Laboratory<\/a>, which did not respond to a request for comment, estimated that between 3,000 and 6,000 panels would be retired annually through 2026.<\/p>\n

Critics say even the high end of those numbers seems suspiciously low given the hundreds of millions of panels now in use and tens of millions yet to come.<\/p>\n

The problem will not be confined to the U.S. Several European countries are further down the NetZero road than America, and in March,\u00a0the European Union<\/a>\u00a0estimated it \u201cwill cumulatively amass 6-13 and 21-35 million tons of (solar) waste by 2040 and 2050, respectively.\u201d The waste coming from wind turbines will be even greater, the EU said, sounding a hopeful note that recycling renewables will become more prominent.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth PV [photovoltaic] and wind power infrastructure waste streams require special handling and recycling methods that are not widespread in Europe today,\u201d the EU wrote.<\/p>\n

The U.S. accounts for roughly 10 percent of the waste, according to several experts, and Tao estimated the U.S. would be producing roughly 2 million metric tons of solar waste a year by 2043, but other studies have a much higher figure. A 2019 study in renewable energy predicted roughly 10 million metric tons of solar waste between 2030 and 2060.<\/p>\n

\u201cSolar waste will grow exponentially in the next 20 years,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>Tao said. \u201cGlobally, we produced 20-25 million tons of solar panels in 2023. They will come offline in roughly 20 years. That is 20-25 million tons of solar waste a year in 2045.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Institute for Energy Research<\/a>\u00a0puts the potential mountain even higher, pointing to studies that put the 2050 figure at 78 million tons.<\/p>\n

For now, 90 percent of this detritus\u00a0goes to landfills<\/a>. And the panel fields and towering turbines must be dismantled, trucked away, usually by diesel-powered vehicles, and then sent to landfills or ports, where they are shipped to poor, developing countries. Fossil fuels may foul the air, but renewables may pollute the ground.<\/p>\n

There has been promising\u00a0research, most of it government-funded<\/a>, on making components like turbine blades more recyclable, but the Trump administration appears unlikely to continue such funding. Such a shift under Trump would put the onus for developing more recyclable, renewable equipment on the private sector.<\/p>\n

But the recycling industry as a whole has never been dynamic. Indeed, the last few years have seen widespread admissions that the recycling revolution that has led Americans to separate their trash into various categories has been\u00a0a bust<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The push to make renewable waste renewable has smacked up against basic questions of profitability, according to Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recycling industry overall is not one that has blossomed in the last 50 years; it\u2019s just not a booming industry,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to need enormous amounts of installations and this stuff is made to last, made tough, which is the enemy of recycling. So it\u2019s all still a big challenge and I think there are a lot of unanswered questions or we\u2019ll be left with a lot of stranded assets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tao agreed that, absent more profit, the recyclable future for renewable equipment is dim.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe still don\u2019t have a perfected technology for recycling them, we\u2019re not there yet,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to see how the industry will move forward, but there are multiple challenges, including the fact it is not profitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Renewable energy champions\u00a0insist all\u00a0this will mean big business, perhaps as much as\u00a0$2.7 billion\u00a0in solar recycling in 2030, according to one estimate. But for now, it isn\u2019t. Clark said his company clears about $5 from each panel.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t only the lagging technology and market pressures. At root, there isn\u2019t much in the panel worth recycling. There are tiny amounts of silver and copper, along with some silicon, but those wafers are deep within a compressed sandwich of glass and other elements. Crushed glass has some limited value in construction, but extracting the small amounts of valuable components is an intensive, high-tech process, Clark said.<\/p>\n

Ausubel said he thinks the smaller residential solar market can probably handle itself and that the real work will be\u00a0disposing of millions of panels\u00a0in the sprawling fields. Because unraveling the panel\u2019s crunched knot is difficult and expensive, it only makes sense to recycle panels in the thousands, and the residential solar market is of less interest, Clark said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like mining that way,\u201d he said of the process. \u201cThe way they are assembled, stacked, with the cells intertwined and wired together amid sheets of plastic, resins, glue and the like.\u201d<\/p>\n

And all leaching cannot be prevented. While the hazardous materials contained in each solar panel, like its valuable elements, are slight, they could present a long-term problem. Even if a landfill strictly adheres to EPA regulations, the leaching from potentially millions of panels poses health risks that Tao compared to mercury poisoning.<\/p>\n

Laws mandating recycling have proved difficult to enforce.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTo date, no single regulatory framework has been developed to serve as a North Star for renewable energy project end-of-life planning, leaving a patchwork of federal, state, and local policies and regulations to sift through\u2014and leaving project owners and developers, as well as landowners and other interested parties, to fend for themselves,\u201d\u00a0a 2024 report<\/a>\u00a0concluded.<\/p>\n

For example, Washington passed a law mandating solar panel recycling in 2017, but it has yet to be enforced. Currently, the law is set to take effect on July 1, but the Department of Ecology\u00a0opposes that date\u00a0in part because manufacturers and consumers have proved reluctant to pay the recycling costs, crimping the solar market there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state\u2019s clean energy transition is facing a setback if the law goes into effect on July 1, 2025,\u201d the department said. \u201cIf the law is unchanged, it would disrupt the supply and cost of panels available for sale in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question of who will pay to dismantle the panels, transport them to landfills or recycling centers, or even, in some cases, ship them abroad has been left unanswered in most states. Lobbyists for wind and solar projects, eager to keep costs low, along with lawmakers captivated by the concept of a NetZero future, have left the market too lightly regulated, said Jason Isaac, founder and chief executive of the\u00a0American Energy Institute<\/a>, which supports \u201cabundant, affordable and reliable energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many cases, when highly regulated power companies look to build a new plant, laws require them to set aside money in bonds or escrow accounts to cover or defray decommissioning costs, Mills said. That is not always the case. A recently decommissioned coal mine in northern Louisiana may cost\u00a0$300 million<\/a>\u00a0to break down, according to the Alliance for Affordable Energy, which says those costs will probably be borne by ratepayers. But Isaac and Mills believe financial decommissions requirements have been either ignored or insufficiently funded in the renewable market.<\/p>\n

Some state legislatures, like Louisiana\u2019s, are moving to address that vacuum and prevent taxpayers from being stuck with the cleanup bill.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is to not leave the state or a farmer with a field of broken solar panels by putting in cradle-to-grave assurances of bonding requirements,\u201d said H. Sterling Burnett of the\u00a0Heartland Institute<\/a>, a group skeptical of apocalyptic global warming scenarios. \u201cWe need to treat these like any other energy source.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April, Burnett testified in Baton Rouge on\u00a0just such a law<\/a>, prompted in part by a solar field in Livingston Parish that has been damaged over the years by hurricanes. In 2022, the legislature passed a bill requiring a bond from renewable project builders, but the specifics of that have not been promulgated, leaving new projects in limbo, said Rep. Brett Geymann, a sponsor of the new bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo existing projects here have required decommissioning, unless that\u2019s part of a private contract with a landowner,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>he said.<\/p>\n

A small number of solar panels are even finding a secondary market in places like Haiti, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere, Clark said. Groups like\u00a0Brighten Haiti<\/a>, which did not respond to a request for comment, take replaced panels that still have some life in them to that impoverished island, although some said that amounts to misguided philanthropy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sort of a \u2018nice\u2019 way of dumping, really,\u201d Tao said. \u201cBecause those places have no clue what to do with it in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of these issues\u00a0are outweighed<\/a>\u00a0by the carbon emission reductions renewable energy represents, according to other experts. Paul Gipe, a California-based energy analyst and\u00a0proponent of wind<\/a>, said concerns about renewable waste are overblown and advanced by enemies of NetZero goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cSolar panels are mostly glass, so glass is easy to recycle,\u201d he said. \u201cWind turbines are mostly metal; again, easy to recycle. Most of the concern about \u2018recycling\u2019 is fear, uncertainty and doubt from the usual suspects.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that turbines, which have a lifespan of about two decades, are mostly metal, but they nonetheless present their own set of end-of-life problems. While most of it may be recyclable, breaking down and transporting the gigantic contraptions on land or offshore requires tremendous labor\u2014and energy. The thousands of tons of concrete that make up their bases will likely remain in the ground or on the ocean floor in some form for decades, according to Mills and others.<\/p>\n

Blades on offshore turbines today can be as long as a football field, and the structures are equal to 10-story buildings, with those offshore sitting on an ocean floor slab as big as a city block.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese offshore things are not renewable and not clean\u2014it takes boat loads of equipment out to the sites to build and maintain them, and it will take boat loads to bring it all back,\u201d <\/strong><\/em>said Robin Shaffer of Protect Our Coasts, a grassroots group that began fighting a since-scuttled offshore project in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more,\u00a0bankruptcies<\/a>\u00a0among\u00a0European companies<\/a>\u00a0have begun to mar the renewable wind landscape as surely as the towers, a trend that could continue or accelerate as the Trump administration\u00a0stops the federal spigot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government has let them off the hook by shaping their policies around climate activism,\u201d Shaffer said. \u201cThey\u2019re not putting down escrow money for decommissioning and someone\u2019s going to have to come along and remove them, or we\u2019ll be staring at these rotting towers in the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n

The blades are so big that they are usually broken into three pieces when decommissioned, and the giant chunks of fiberglass, resin, and composite materials go to landfills or warehouses.<\/p>\n

Already, horror stories exist of municipalities faced with decommissioning problems. Towns like\u00a0Sweetwater, Texas<\/a>, which for many years has been the leading state for wind power, have seen\u00a0turbine recycling contracts<\/a>\u00a0ignored.\u00a0Global Fiberglass Solutions,<\/a>\u00a0one of the companies handling such contracts, did not return requests for comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t reuse turbines, and there are now thousands upon thousands of blades just sitting there in warehouses already,\u201d Isaac said. \u201cIt\u2019s an environmental disaster we\u2019re looking at.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nTue, 06\/03\/2025 – 18:25<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/energy\/wasting-away-wind-and-solarville<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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