MELBOURNE, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- Australia is facing a growing waste challenge from its rooftop solar boom, with more than one million tonnes of end-of-life solar panels expected to accumulate by 2035, a new report has warned.
The report, led by Australia's RMIT University in partnership with global think tank RAND, found that much of the waste could end up in stockpiling, landfill, or informal disposal rather than being reused or recycled.
Although Australia has more rooftop solar panels installed per person than any other country, recycling remains more expensive than landfill disposal, while systems to recover, refurbish or recycle them at scale are not yet in place, RMIT University said in a statement on Thursday.
The report recommended establishing a national marketplace for used solar panels, introducing a product stewardship scheme by mid-2027 and improving the commercial viability of recycling.
Between 45 and 65 percent of decommissioned panels remain suitable for reuse, but only about 10 percent are currently tested for that purpose, the report noted.
Australia already has more than 40.6 gigawatts of installed solar capacity across over four million systems, generating about 40,000 tonnes of end-of-life panels annually, which could exceed 100,000 tonnes a year by the early 2030s.
Recovered materials, led by silver, could be worth more than 1 billion Australian dollars (about 700 million U.S. dollars) cumulatively by 2035, the report said, adding that reinstalling usable panels could increase the country's solar generation capacity by up to 17 percent. ■