Ørsted pledges to reuse, recycle all solar panels

Danish clean energy group Ørsted A/S (CPH:ORSTED) today made an "industry-first" commitment to reuse or recycle all solar panels from its solar farms globally with immediate effect.

At the moment, the reuse and recycling of solar panels are limited, and landfilling remains a common practice, meaning that materials important for the energy transition go to waste, the company said.

Ørsted unveiled a partnership with solar recycling company Solarcycle to process and recycle the end-of-life panels from its projects in the US, one of the developer’s main solar markets. Solarcycle’s recycling facility in Texas extracts valuable materials such as metals, glass and silicon from the panels.

"We want to create a world that runs entirely on green energy, and we want to do it in a sustainable way,” Ørsted senior vice president Ingrid Reumert said, adding that the new circularity commitment complements the company’s existing ambition to reuse or recycle all wind turbine blades.

Ørsted aims to achieve 17.5 GW of onshore wind and solar capacity by 2030.

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