An international research group has developed a comprehensive framework to evaluate the economic and climate benefits of local versus outsourced PV waste recycling. Covering mainstream recycling technologies, 32 regions, various waste-trade configurations and subsidy schemes, the researchers assessed 1,708 different recycling scenarios.
“The key novelty of our research is that we move beyond simply asking how much photovoltaic waste will be generated and instead examine how it should be managed across regions with very different technological and economic conditions,” lead author Jian Zuo told pv magazine. “We developed an integrated global framework that links material supply constraints, future PV deployment and waste generation with region-specific recycling technology pathways, cross-regional waste flows and policy interventions.”
Zuo said the framework captures both the economic and climate benefits of PV recycling and, importantly, how those benefits are distributed across regions.
“By evaluating 1,708 recycling practice scenarios across 32 global regions, our study shows that strategies that increase global recycling benefits can also lead to a greater concentration of those benefits in regions with stronger technological and economic advantages,” he said.
The researchers first modeled future prices for copper, aluminum, silver and silicon. They then fed these projections into the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) to estimate PV deployment under different socioeconomic and climate pathways. The resulting capacity projections were used in a dynamic material-flow analysis to calculate end-of-life PV waste through 2060.
Finally, the researchers combined life-cycle assessment with life-cycle cost analysis to estimate the climate and economic impacts of recycling under different technology pathways, waste-trade arrangements and subsidy schemes.
The 1,708 scenarios combined assumptions about future PV decommissioning, recycling technologies, international waste trade and subsidy policies. The technology pathways included business as usual (BAU), economic priority, carbon priority and technology diffusion. The trade scenarios covered local recycling, extended producer responsibility (EPR)-oriented trade, expanded global trade and regional trade.
The researchers also tested five subsidy schemes: no subsidy, continuous subsidy, declining subsidy, low-carbon-price support and high-carbon-price support. These combinations were assessed across 28 PV decommissioning scenarios to compare their effects on recycling economics, climate benefits and regional inequality.
Considering supply-side material constraints, the framework projects that global PV waste will reach 297 million to 402 million metric tons by 2060, with middle-income regions such as China becoming major contributors after 2040. Despite anticipated technological advances, global PV waste recycling is not expected to reach its break-even point for more than a decade.
“We were surprised by the dual role of material prices,” Zuo said. “Rising prices for materials such as silicon, silver, copper and aluminum can make recycling more profitable because recovered materials become more valuable. But at the same time, those higher prices can make new PV deployment more expensive, slow installations and ultimately reduce the amount of PV waste generated decades later.
“So the same price increase that makes each tonne of PV waste more valuable to recycle can also reduce the amount of waste that will eventually be available for recycling. This feedback between material markets, PV deployment and future waste generation is something that conventional waste projections often overlook.”
According to the results, combining region-specific recycling technologies with outsourced recycling strategies produces the highest global net benefits. The approach could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 3.32 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent and generate cumulative net benefits of $529.1 billion to $935.5 billion by 2060.
“However, the same process can concentrate recycling revenues and technological development in a relatively small number of regions. This means that strategies that perform well in terms of overall global benefits may produce a more uneven distribution of those benefits across regions,” Zuo said.
The researchers found that a well-designed declining-subsidy scheme can help mitigate these inequalities, particularly during the early stages of market development.
“A declining subsidy, which is gradually phased out once recycling becomes economically viable, can reduce regional disparities more effectively than continuous subsidies while requiring only a small fraction of the fiscal expenditure,” Zuo said. “By contrast, high-carbon-price subsidies can actually increase regional disparities because regions with mature carbon markets and advanced recycling industries tend to receive disproportionately large benefits.”
The research findings were presented in “Towards an equitable future of global photovoltaic waste recycling,” published in nature. Scientists from China’s Shandong University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, the University of Hong Kong, Taiyuan University of Technology, Australia’s Adelaide University, and Sweden’s Linköping University have contributed to the study.
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