Solar Recovery Corporation's Biloela solar panel recovery facility delayed
The Biloela site is not accepting any more panels until processing begins. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)
In short:
Solar Recovery Corporation's Biloela solar panel recovery site will not be complete until May 2026.
Currently only 10 per cent of all panels are recycled or reused in Australia.
What's next?
Experts say federal government regulation is needed to better manage solar panel end-of-life issues.
A solar recycling company has stockpiled more than 20,000 decommissioned solar panels in central Queensland, but the infrastructure to recycle them is yet to be built.
It comes amid calls for the federal government to regulate and support the fledgling recycling industry, with most of the country's retired solar panels currently sent to landfill or exported overseas.
Solar Recovery Corporation said it had planned for its central Queensland facility to be operational at the end of 2024 or the start of this year.
However, the company told the ABC that construction delays would blow the facility's delivery out to May 2026.
"There have been some delays in the construction of the site due to some environmental issues," chief operating officer Samuel Agostino said.
"It was nothing out of the ordinary. When I say environmental issues [it's] just the standard practice that you've got to go through — applications that need to be put into council and state governments, and it all takes time."
Solar Recovery Corporation says the technology it will use will recover 99 per cent of materials from solar panels. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)
Mr Agostino added the company also chose to upgrade its technology for processing the panels, which caused a further small delay.
"These projects take a long time and there's a lot of reasons for that, but one of the main reasons is that this industry is still in its infancy,"he said.
More than 20,000 panels stockpiled
The company needs a high volume of solar panels to make it financially viable once it begins recycling and estimates there are more than 20,000 panels stored in Biloela.
Mr Agostino confirmed that once operational there would be no stockpiling at the site.
Biloela, a small agricultural and mining town, is about to host a major new industry. (Australian Story: Marc Smith)
It has also stopped accepting panels as it has reached its storage capacity.
"Unlike other companies we don't remove the aluminium frames and sell the aluminium off because once you do that the waste goes from being inactive waste to active,"Mr Agostino said.
"As soon as we get our machines processing we'll start our processing cycle which removes the aluminium."
Mr Agostino said the business planned to process about 3,500 panels a week using technology from Italy, with about 99 per cent of the materials recovered.
Solar Recovery Corporation will also recover material from tyres, cardboard, and plastic at the Biloela site.
Solar panels stockpiled in Biloela. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)
In 2023 the Queensland governments gave the Banana Shire Council and Resource Recovery Corporation $3.37 million towards the project, which included a 50 per cent contribution from the federal government.
"There have been a number of variations to this agreement to accommodate delays, and the Queensland government continues to work with the council," said a spokesperson for the Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning.
They said funds were released when project milestones were met.
Mr Agostino said the local council was building the site, and Solar Recovery Corporation would lease a portion of the land.
The company has plans to expand to other parts of Australia including New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia.
It has also secured a site in west Melbourne, with processing expected in the coming months.
No regulation
Rong Deng is a researcher at the University of New South Wales who is leading solar panel end-of-life and recycling research at the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics.
Dr Deng said at a federal level there were no regulations governing how solar panels were dealt with when they are no longer used.
However, the industry expects regulation will come soon, with some companies even banking on it.
"Some people currently stockpile them because everyone knows there will be regulation coming soon, and in the regulation there could be a subsidy for recycling,"Dr Deng said.
Dr Rong Deng says companies are stockpiling with some "banking on" future government subsidies. (Supplied: Dr Rong Deng)
She said Victoria was the only state which bans solar panels from landfill.
Queensland's first solar panel recycling plant opened six months ago.
For recycling businesses to be viable, Dr Deng said they need a high volume of solar panels, as each panel only has a recoverable value of up to $40.
"Most of our panels today are either landfilled or exported. If those volumes can come to recycling then that would probably be enough to kick start the economy of scale," she said.
Federal government working with industry
A spokesperson for the Federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water said managing end-of-life solar panels was a priority for the government.
"The department is working closely with industry to inform a cost benefit analysis for a PV recycling scheme," the spokesperson said.
The department said anyone who imports, designs, produces, sells, uses or disposes of panels had a shared responsibility to reduce the environmental impact of products.
About two million solar system panels are retired every year. (ABC News: John Gunn)
Dr Deng said less than 10 per cent of retired panels were currently being recycled or reused in Australia.
"Many panels when they come off the system are still functioning," Dr Deng said.
"Many are exported to Africa or the Middle East for reuse.
"But then the problem is we don't know how long those panels can be used for, so it's very likely those panels will eventually be landfilled overseas."
Dr Deng said since the rooftop solar market began in 2010 the efficiency of systems had doubled and people were now wanting to upgrade to bigger systems.
"That's the problem we're facing, we are talking about one to two million panels retiring every year [at the moment] and this number will double every, say, five to eight years," she said.
Dr Deng said of the 10 companies across the country recycling panels only about three were recycling day-to-day or even on a weekly basis.