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Its hard work soaking up sunlight to generate clean electricity. After about 25 to 30 years, solar panels wear out. Over the years, heating and cooling cycles stress the materials. Small cracks develop, precipitation corrodes the frame and layers of materials can start to peel apart. In 2023, about 90% of old or faulty solar panels in the U.S. ended up in landfills. Millions of panels have been installed worldwide over the past few decadesand by about 2030, so many will be ready to retire that they could cover about 3,000 football fields. As an electrical engineer who has studied many aspects of renewable energy, recycling solar panels seems like a smart idea, but its complicated. Built to withstand years of wind and weather, solar panels are designed for strength and are not easy to break down. The cost conundrum Sending a solar panel to a landfill costs between US$1 and $5 in the U.S. But recycling it can cost three to four times as much, around $18. And the valuable materials inside solar panels, such as silver and copper, are in small amounts, so theyre worth about $10 to $12which makes recycling a money-losing prospect. Improvements in the recycling process may change the economics. But for now, its even hard to reclaim the glass in solar panels. Many layers are glued together and need to be separated before they can be melted down for reuse. And if the separation is not precise enough, the glass that is recovered wont be of high enough quality to use in making other solar panels or windows. It will be suitable only for lower-quality uses such as fill material in construction projects. Other panels, usually older ones, may contain small amounts of toxic metals such as lead or cadmium. It can be difficult to tell whether toxic materials are present, though. Even experts have trouble, in part because current tests, such as the toxicity characteristic leaching procedure, can give inaccurate results. Therefore, many companies that own large numbers of solar panels just assume their panels are hazardous waste, which increases costs for both disposal and recycling. Clearer labels would help people know what a solar panel contains and how to handle it. If someone wants to recycle a solar panel, and is willing to bear the cost, there arent many places in the U.S. that are willing to do it and are equipped to be safe about it. Designing for a new life Despite the Trump administrations cuts to subsidies for solar projects, millions of solar panels are already in use in the U.S., and millions more are expected to be installed worldwide in the coming years. As a result, the solar industry is working on ways to minimize waste and repeatedly reuse materials. Some ideas include sending used solar panels that still work at least a bit to developing nations, or even reusing them within the U.S. But there are not clear rules or processes for connecting reused panels to the power grid, so reuse tends to happen in less common, off-grid situations rather than becoming widespread. Future solar panels could also be designed for easier recycling, using different construction methods and materials, and improved processing systems. Making panels last longerperhaps as long as 50 yearsusing more durable materials, weather-resistant components, real-time monitoring of panel performance and predictive maintenance to replace parts before they wear out would reduce waste significantly. Building solar panels that are more easily disassembled into separate components made of different materials could also speed recycling. Components that fit together like Lego bricksinstead of using glueor dissolvable sealants and adhesives could be parts of these designs. Improved recycling methods could also help. Right now, panels are often simply ground up, mixing all of their components materials together and requiring a complicated process to separate them out again for reuse. More advanced approaches can extract individual materials with high purity. For example, a process called salt etching can recover over 99% of silver and 98% of silicon, at purity levels that are appropriate for high-end reuse, potentially even in new solar panels, without using toxic acids. That method can also recover significant quantities of copper and lead for use in new products. A shared journey Increasing the practice of recycling solar panels has more than just environmental benefits. Over the long term, recovering and reusing valuable materials may prove more cost-effective than continually buying new raw materials on the open market. That could lower costs for future solar panel installations. If they are fully reused, the value of these recoverable materials could reach over $15 billion globally by 2050. In addition, recycling panels and components reduces American reliance on materials imported from overseas, making solar power projects less vulnerable to global disruptions. Recycling also keeps toxic materials out of landfills. That can help ensure a shift to clean energy doesnt create new or bigger environmental problems. Also, recycling solar panels < href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psep.2023.03.053">emits far less carbon dioxide than manufacturing panels from raw materials. There are already some efforts underway to boost solar panel recycling. The Solar Energy Industries Association trade group is working to collect and share information about companies that recycle solar panels. Governments can provide tax breaks or other financial incentives for using recycled materials, or ban disposing of solar panels in landfills. California, Washington, New Jersey and North Carolina have enacted laws or are studying ways to manage solar panel waste, with some even requiring recycling or reuse. These efforts are important steps toward addressing the growing need for solar panel recycling and promoting a more sustainable solar industry. Anurag Srivastava is a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at West Virginia University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Mark Zuckerberg and current and former directors and officers of Meta Platforms agreed on Thursday to settle claims seeking $8 billion for the damage they allegedly caused the company by allowing repeated violations of Facebook users’ privacy, a lawyer for the shareholders told a Delaware judge on Thursday. The parties did not disclose details of the settlement and defense lawyers did not address the judge, Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery. McCormick adjourned the trial just as it was to enter its second day and she congratulated the parties. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Sam Closic, said the agreement just came together quickly. Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who is a defendant in the trial and a Meta director, was scheduled to testify on Thursday. Shareholders of Meta sued Zuckerberg, Andreessen and other former company officials including former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg in hopes of holding them liable for billions of dollars in fines and legal costs the company paid in recent years. The Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook $5 billion in 2019 after finding that it failed to comply with a 2012 agreement with the regulator to protect users’ data. The shareholders wanted the 11 defendants to use their personal wealth to reimburse the company. The defendants denied the allegations, which they called “extreme claims.” Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021. The company was not a defendant. The company declined to comment. A lawyer for the defendants did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This settlement may bring relief to the parties involved, but its a missed opportunity for public accountability,” said Jason Kint, the head of Digital Content Next, a trade group for content providers. Zuckerberg was expected to take the stand on Monday and Sandberg on Wednesday. The trial was scheduled to run through the end of next week. The case was also expected to include testimony from former Facebook board members Peter Thiel, Palantir Technologies co-founder, and Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix. Meta investors alleged in the lawsuit that former and current board members completely failed to oversee the company’s compliance with the 2012 FTC agreement and claim that Zuckerberg and Sandberg knowingly ran Facebook as an illegal data harvesting operation. The case followed revelations that data from millions of Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s successful U.S. presidential campaign in 2016. Those revelations led to the FTC fine, which was a record at the time. On Wednesday, an expert witness for the plaintiffs testified about what he called “gaps and weaknesses” in Facebook’s privacy policies but would not say if the company violated the 2012 agreement that Facebook reached with the FTC. Jeffrey Zients, a former board member, testified on Wednesday that the company did not agree to the FTC fine to spare Zuckerberg legal liability, as shareholders allege. On its website, the company has said it has invested billions of dollars into protecting user privacy since 2019. The trial would have been a rare opportunity for Meta investors to see Zuckerberg answer probing questions under oath. In 2017, Zuckerberg was expected to testify at a trial involving a lawsuit by company investors opposed to his plan to issue a special class of Facebook stock that would have extended his control over that company. That case also settled before he took the stand. “Facebook has successfully remade the ‘Cambridge Analytica’ scandal about a few bad actors rather than an unraveling of its entire business model of surveillance capitalism and the reciprocal, unbridled sharing of personal data,” Kint said. “That reckoning is now left unresolved.” Tom Hals, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
The Social Security Administration (SSA) will officially stop issuing paper checks. The transition, which aims to improve efficiency, security, and ensure beneficiaries receive their monthly benefits promptly, will come into effect starting September 30, 2025. Beneficiaries should receive electronic funds transfers (EFTs) quicker than the time it takes for a check to arrive in the mail. Electronic payments should also be more secure, with the SSA claiming a paper check is 16 times more likely to be stolen or lost. Meanwhile, the federal government will financially benefit from the change. It costs about 50 cents to mail a paper check, while the EFT should cost under 15 cents. How many people will be impacted by this change? The SSA claims that less than 1% of recipients still get paper checks. As paper checks are phased out for Social Security benefits, individuals can either enroll in direct deposit through their bank or get a Direct Express card. The latter works as a prepaid debit card with just the federal benefits added to it, meaning you don’t need a bank account to use it. A survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) last year found that about 5.6 million U.S. households were unbanked in 2023. Although the percentage of people without bank accounts is declining overall, certain populations are disproportionately impacted, according to the FDIC. Those include low-income households, Black and Hispanic households, and people who are disabled, have less formal education, or are in single-parent households. The plan to gradually eliminate paper checks actually dates back to 2010, according to the Department of Treasury. However, a lot of recipients may just be hearing about it after the SSA posted an alert on Monday. Comments on that page suggest many are unhappy with the change. What steps are being taken to assist the elderly and physically / visually handicapped paper check recipients?” one commenter stated. “What will SSA do if, on 30 September, there are hundreds of thousands of benefit recipients who have not set up electronic payments? Just not send them their payments? another commenter asked. The SSA claims it is proactively sending notices to beneficiaries who receive paper checks and explaining how to make the change. Their technicians should also be able to help with the transition.
Category:
E-Commerce
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