{"id":577858,"date":"2026-04-01T05:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577858\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T05:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T05:19:09","slug":"australians-expected-to-generate-more-solar-panel-waste-each-year-by-2030-inquiry-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577858\/","title":{"rendered":"Australians expected to generate more solar panel waste each year by 2030, inquiry hears"},"content":{"rendered":"

The annual level of solar panel waste generated in Australia is expected to grow by 30,000 tonnes by 2030, according to forecasts from a federal government department working to create a national recycling plan.<\/p>\n

In January, a $24.7 million, three-year solar panel recycling pilot aimed at developing a national plan for handling solar waste was announced by the federal government.<\/p>\n

The ‘trap’ threatening national solar panel recycling<\/a><\/p>\n

Australia is on the brink of a solar panel waste crisis. Experts say there’s much to do before a national recycling program can stand on its own two feet.<\/p>\n

The pilot aims to collect up to 250,000 solar panels from 100 sites across the country to gather data on how best to recycle them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a parliamentary committee hearing today, officials from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water explained some of the challenges the pilot faced.<\/p>\n

Cameron Hutchison, from the department’s packaging, stewardship and investment branch, said the recycling issue might be bigger than the federal government anticipated.<\/p>\n

“At the end of last year around 60,000 tonnes of solar panels in Australia reached their end of life and that \u2014 on our current projections \u2014 could end up being around 90,000 tonnes by 2030,” he said.<\/p>\n

“There’s some industry work there though that starts to bring that number into question, as maybe a bit of an underestimate.<\/p>\n

“Some of that is predicated on the fact that we think solar panels are used for around 20 years.”<\/p>\n

Mr Hutchison said this life span was “shortening” with the emergence of new technology and better panels.<\/p>\n

“People are replacing them more quickly \u2026 the problem is there and known and possibly even bigger than we anticipate,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Men<\/p>\n

Up to 50,000 solar panels could end up in landfill by 2035, the federal government has forecast. (ABC News: John Gunn)<\/p>\n

James Tregurtha, from the department’s circular economy branch, told the committee the logistics of moving discarded solar panels to waste facilities had prevented many of them being recycled.<\/p>\n

“They’re heavy, they can break if they’re not handled properly, if they break they are less able to be recycled due to the shards of glass,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Getting intact panels from in situ to a recycling facility in a way that maintains their recyclability is, from our perspective, one of the key challenges.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Many solar panels are not recycled because they are damaged while being removed or discarded. (ABC News: John Gunn)<\/p>\n

About one in three Australian households have rooftop panels, making the country one of the highest users of the technology, according to the federal government<\/a>.<\/p>\n

End-of-life solar panel waste forecasts released by the International Energy Agency<\/a> in 2016 showed Australia could generate as much as 145,000 tonnes by 2030.<\/p>\n

Early government forecasts compiled from self-reported industry data have suggested up to 50,000 solar panels may enter landfill by 2030, equating to around 1 million tonnes of waste.<\/p>\n

Australia does not yet have a national dataset for tracking solar panel waste and the number of products that enter landfill or are recycled.<\/p>\n

“A lot of challenges are around the logistics of getting them to the right places in the right condition,” Mr Hutchison said.<\/p>\n

“We understand that in the right condition with the right system, about 90 per cent of a panel can be recycled.<\/p>\n

“We need to do more work to understand how we can set that system up in Australia and support that system.”<\/p>\n

Why are people throwing away solar panels?<\/p>\n

Many Australians have been discarding rooftop solar panels so they can replace them with newer, cheaper and more efficient models, according to Mr Tregurtha.<\/p>\n

“Over a period of the last five to 10 years, your top end panel \u2026 would have been 330 kilowatts. It’s now 450, so it’s like 25 per cent better and it’s cheaper,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The reason it’s cheaper is effectively because of \u2026 the vast scaling up of production, particularly across some Asian nations.<\/p>\n

“As people seek to self-supply more of their own electricity off their own roofs or, in the case of commercial venture, how do you improve your bottom line. By getting those more efficient panels that will generate more power for a cheaper investment.”<\/p>\n

How cheap, widespread power from the sun could overshadow solar farms<\/a><\/p>\n

Australia’s renewable energy push has resulted in a surge in household solar power. But what does that mean for private solar farms?<\/p>\n

Mr Tregurtha said there was limited evidence showing Australians were choosing to re-use their old solar panels.<\/p>\n

“Generally what we’re finding is once the panels come off the roofs and are taken into a stream of disposal, the re-use proposition is probably uneconomic given the amount of testing [and] maintenance that you would have to do,” he said.<\/p>\n

“People have suggested things like using them for community housing or for facilities, voluntary organisations [and] scout halls.<\/p>\n

“The issue there is one of making sure they’re safe because you are then taking a whole system apart and putting it back together somewhere else.”<\/p>\n

The federal government pilot would also aim to assess best practice for reducing toxicity and electrical safety risks related to solar panel waste, Mr Tregurtha said.<\/p>\n

The government was still in the early stages of finding an organisation to run the pilot, the committee heard.<\/p>\n

“We anticipate that we would have the pilot up and running this side of the end of the financial year,” Mr Hutchison said.<\/p>\n

“From there we expect the pilot to run for 12 to 18 months, where we’re really extracting the data and learnings.<\/p>\n

“We’re really at the forefront of this. Australia is a leader in the uptake of solar.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The annual level of solar panel waste generated in Australia is expected to grow by 30,000 tonnes by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,283468,75,283471,283469,3810,8146,128,8239,8525,262307,283470],"class_list":{"0":"post-577858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-can-you-recycle-solar-panels","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-federal-government-pilot-for-recycling-solar-panels","13":"tag-how-to-recycle-solar-panels","14":"tag-recycling","15":"tag-renewable-energy","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-solar-energy","18":"tag-solar-panels","19":"tag-solar-waste","20":"tag-what-to-do-with-old-solar-panels"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}