Business Renewables Centre-Canada director says fee is five times higher than next highest country’s solar recycling fee
Alberta will ban solar panels from landfills and impose a $14 recycling fee on every new panel supplied in the province beginning Oct. 1, launching what the province calls the first recycling program of its kind in Canada.
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The program will ensure panels are diverted from landfills and recycled at the end of their useful lives, the province says, while supporting an emerging recycling industry and shielding taxpayers from future cleanup costs.
“We will not wait until mountains of dead solar panels are piling up in our landfills before acting,” Environment and Protected Areas Minister Grant Hunter said in a news release. “We are putting the system in place now to recover valuable materials, attract private investment and build a new recycling industry here in Alberta,”
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The $14 fee will apply only to new panels supplied in Alberta after the program takes effect, with no retroactive charges for panels already installed.
The money will be used to cover the collection, transportation and recycling of panels when they reach the end of their useful lives, according to the province.
By 2045, more than 95 per cent of solar panels currently installed in Alberta are expected to reach the end of their lives, generating as much as 72,700 tonnes of material.
Solar panels contain valuable glass, aluminum, silicon, silver, copper and other metals, which can be recovered and used in new products.
Affordability and Utilities Minister RJ Sigurdson said planning for their eventual disposal now will help prevent those costs from falling on taxpayers in the future.
“By planning ahead to ensure expired panels are properly collected and materials are reused where possible, we’re protecting taxpayers from future cleanup costs and keeping power affordable and sustainable for generations to come,” Sigurdson said in a statement.
The Alberta Recycling Management Authority will oversee the program.
“As Alberta’s renewable energy sector grows, recycling solar panels is the logical next step in building a stronger circular economy: maximizing resource use, reducing waste and delivering long-term value for Albertans,” added Ed Gugenheimer, CEO of the Alberta Recycling Management Authority.
But renewable energy advocates say Alberta has set its fee far too high, warning it could add about $1 million to the cost of an average utility-scale solar project and erode the province’s competitiveness for private investment.
The Business Renewables Centre-Canada, a non-profit whose membership consists of renewable energy developers and large corporations looking to purchase renewable energy to address their emissions from energy, says it supports establishing a solar recycling program but argues Alberta’s $14 fee is disproportionately high.
Jorden Dye, director of BRC-Canada, said the organization and its members are “disappointed to see the government saddle the industry with another disproportionate burden,” describing the fee as a “punitive tax.”
An analysis by BRC-Canada found Alberta’s fee is more than double the charge in any other jurisdiction it examined, and does not account for the salvage value of materials recovered from panels.
“The next highest solar fee in the world is Germany at $5 per panel, and they actually account for the salvage value,” Dye said.
“Alberta is charging 139 per cent higher than that, and not accounting for any of the value that you get back from recycling these (solar panels).”
BRC-Canada estimates the fee will add approximately $1 million in upfront costs to an average 38-megawatt solar project in Alberta.
Dye said the industry supports recycling solar panels and planning for their eventual disposal. His concern is the cost Alberta has attached to doing so.
“The idea of being a leader on solar recycling is actually really exciting for us,” he said.
“The problem is that this (recycling program) is being put in at such a prohibitively expensive cost compared to other jurisdictions.”
He also questioned what he described as a lack of transparency around how the $14 fee was calculated and why the province needs to impose it now.
Most of Alberta’s utility-scale and rooftop solar capacity has been built within the past decade, Dye said, while panels typically have life spans of 25 to 35 years. As a result, he argues the province had more time to develop its recycling system before substantial volumes of panels begin reaching the end of their lives.
“Alberta’s solar projects that have been installed in the past 10 years are 10 to 15 years away from seeing the start of large amounts of solar panels needing to be recycled,” he said.
“In Alberta, we had time to get this right.”
NoBrennan@postmedia.com
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