GREEN TECH WASTE GETS LIFT
As clean energy transition accelerates, uses emerge for old EV batteries, solar panels and wind turbines
Their sleek curves offer the first clue that the half dozen benches scattered around downtown Tehachapi aren't run-of-the-mill spots for the public to sit.
Plaques on those benches say, “I'm Gus made from a wind turbine blade.” And QR code links explain that Gus is a line of outdoor furniture offered by Canvus, an Ohio-based company that diverts massive blades from decommissioned windmills away from landfills and upcycles them into picnic tables, swings, fountains and other forms of functional art.
Visitors can admire the Colorado River from Canvus benches in Bullhead City, Arizona, too. And the trend is coming soon to Southern California, per Canvus spokesman Parker Kowalski, with eight turbine blade projects headed to Palm Desert and more in the works for Rialto, Los Alamitos, Fillmore, Montclair and Covina.
Canvus' furniture illustrates a unique solution to a growing problem: As we transition to a green economy, we're generating waste that, if we aren't careful, isn't so green.
While old wind turbine blades are problematic because they're so large and durable, solar panels and electric vehicle batteries can contain hazardous materials. Some of those materials are also valuable, which presents an opportunity to recover and reuse them when panels and batteries are damaged or replaced by newer models. But it also means special handling is mandated to ensure the materials don't pose health or safety risks.
Such risks have been weaponized by some who stand to benefit economically or politically from sticking with fossil fuels. Social media is rife with misinformation about the impact of manufacturing and retiring EV batteries, solar panels and turbine blades, with some posts claiming the risks outweigh the good green technology offers — a myth that experts who've spent years comparing climate impacts of various alternatives dismiss outright.
“Electric vehicles are much
better than gasoline, even when taking into account the full life cycle,” said Jessica Dunn, a senior analyst focused on transportation at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We need to eliminate transportation emissions by rapidly electrifying, and we have to take this opportunity to also do it responsibly.”
To make that happen, there are some serious challenges to overcome.
For example, it’s estimated about 10% of solar panels currently get recycled, since few facilities can take them and it’s still cheaper to drop them at a dump. And that problem could grow in coming years, as the first generation of mainstream rooftop solar, wind turbines and EVS is supplanted by newer technology.
Still, experts say there’s good news on these fronts, too, with some Southern California companies offering innovative solutions to repurpose and recycle green tech waste.
To quickly scale up these solutions and ensure they’re cost effective, the Biden administration has been directing billions of dollars from federal funding packages to these sectors.
California also is looking to follow in the footsteps of places like New Jersey, which now mandates recycling some green electronic waste, and European countries with “producer responsibility” programs that require manufacturers to establish end-of-life pathways for their products. And when consumers buy these products, there’s typically a fee built into the purchase price that helps pay for responsible disposal.
This is not a new concept for California, which has stewardship programs in place for products like paint, mattresses and pharmaceuticals. And Dunn said the fact that we’re even having disposal conversations shows we’ve learned some lessons after allowing fossil fuel companies to leave taxpayers on the hook for abandoned oil wells and decommissioned power plants.
Dealing with old electrical equipment also isn’t a crisis close to on par with the urgent need to slow climate change by switching to an electrified economy, said Meg Slattery, a PH.D. candidate at UC Davis who’s been studying battery recycling. While those are the very concerns that drew her to this field, Slattery said she’s been pleasantly surprised to learn how much effort already is being made toward green waste recycling.
“In some sense we’re kind of trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist yet,” she said. “Which I think is great, for the most part, because it would be better if we learned how to be proactive about these kinds of things.”
It’s also important to remember that the systems being displaced carry waste risk, Slattery noted. A recent study from the American Lung Association, for example, predicts we could save 89,000 lives and $978 billion in health care costs by 2050 if no new gas-powered vehicles were sold in the United States starting in 2035.
“We have a better solution,” Dunn said. “It might not be the perfect solution yet, but we’re trying to get there.”
Read on to learn more about the unique challenges and opportunities around creating responsible end-oflife plans for EV batteries, solar panels and wind turbines.
New charge for EV batteries
The field of solar panels dotting a stretch of desert in Lancaster looks like a typical solar farm. But the project, owned by Santa Monica-based B2U Storage Solutions, is believed to be the nation’s first to pair a solar energy system with retired EV batteries, which store the energy captured by solar panels and sell it back to the state energy grid as needed.
Batteries for EVS are the green tech waste stream that gets the most attention. But experts say they might be the least problematic, with many examples of profitable repurposing and recycling operations already established.
While EV sales hit a record high in 2023, just 1% of the nearly 300 million vehicles in the United States today are electric. And since battery warranties typically run for eight to 10 years, Slattery said there just haven’t yet been many retired batteries to grapple with.
That will change soon, though, with consulting firm Mckinsey & Co. estimating more than 100 million EV batteries will be retired over the next decade.
The first preference, if possible, is to find a second life for retired EV batteries. Dunn said many EV warranties kick in when a battery dips below 80% of its range capacity, meaning it has lots of life left for energy storage, as in the Lancaster project. There also are talks of using old batteries to charge existing EV batteries, Dunn said, or to supply electricity to grocery stores when the power goes out so they can avoid using gas-powered generators.
Reusing batteries in this way “is a relatively new concept that has yet to build a track record of performance” though, according to Jason Burwen, a vice president with Oregon-based Gridstor. That’s why Burwen’s company is sticking with new batteries as it looks to develop a stationary storage facility in Santa Fe Springs.
Another challenge for battery repurposing is that the price of new products is coming down so rapidly that retired EV batteries are losing their economic edge. It’s why Ryan Melsert, CEO of American Battery Technology Company, believes the future solution primarily lies in recycling.
Cobalt, nickel, lithium: All are in EV batteries and all are valuable. Some 99% of those materials are now sourced from other countries, often after environmentally damaging extraction processes. So if Melsert’s company — which has won government grants to open a recycling plant in Reno in 2026 — can recover those minerals from decommissioned EV batteries, the U.S. will be less reliant on foreign markets to make new batteries.
Because the process is so technical and so new, Melsert said there aren’t many companies doing the work yet, with no EV battery recyclers yet in California. “There’s already more endof-life batteries that need to be recycled than there is recycling capacity.”
There are efforts to establish battery recycling alongside lithium extraction and battery manufacturing operations near the Salton Sea. Slattery said that sort of circular system, powered by the area’s clean geothermal energy, would be an ideal solution from an emissions standpoint.
The solar panel challenge
Picture a semitrailer filled with old solar panels. Now picture panel-filled semis sitting bumper to bumper, across three lanes of traffic, filling every eastbound freeway in the United States.
That’s how many solar panels will be decommissioned across the country by 2050, according to Tom Hobbs, chief operating officer of Solar Recycling in Santa Ana.
Currently, around 9 million panels are retired each year, but Hobbs said there’s capacity to process only about 1 million of those panels at recycling companies like his, and the next closest facility is in Yuma, Ariz. That means nine-out-of-10 retired panels are going into landfills or sitting in storage, waiting for better solutions to become available.
“It’s not ‘the sky is falling tomorrow,’” Hobbs said. “But the sky is muddled, and we need to get it sorted before it falls.”
There are some promising developments in the works for solar panel reuse. An option that excites Arun Ramadass, with Scale Microgrids, is taking panels that aren’t efficient enough for commercial-scale plants and using them for temporary power after natural disasters or in developing parts of the world.
One hurdle for solar panel recycling is that, unlike EV batteries, solar panels have only trace amounts of valuable materials, such as silver. What’s more, extracting those materials in a costeffective way is, so far, close to impossible. Recyclers can sell around 80% of a panel’s reclaimed material, but it’s mostly low-value glass and aluminum.
To help make the process profitable, recyclers charge around $15 to accept a typical solar panel, well above the $3 to $7 charged to drop a panel at a landfill. For now, Hobbs said, the industry is relying on panel users — companies decommissioning solar farms and property owners dumping rooftop solar — to pay a little extra to be environmentally responsible.
“I would love to say that going green is the most economical way to do everything in the world, but it’s not,” Hobb said. “It’s just like eating organic. It’ll cost you more, but it’s better for you and for the planet.”
California also has strict rules around handling panels, which are considered toxic waste. Hobbs said those rules make it challenging for recyclers to get into the sector, so there’s been a push for some legislative relief.
Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-san Diego, is pitching a bill that would require state regulators to cut some of the red tape and costs associated with handling solar panels.
He also wants to create a solar panel end-of-life program, with requirements to use recycled components in new solar panels.
Both bills passed the Assembly and have until Aug. 31 to make it through the Senate.
Wind turbine blades get new spin
Recyclable flooring panels. Material for large-scale 3D printing. A coating that can make concrete waterproof. Twenty companies across the country just received $75,000 each from the Department of Energy to turn recycled wind turbine blades into those and other products.
Up to 90% of the mass of a wind turbine is made of materials such as steel and copper that can be recycled. But the same features that make turbine blades good at generating energy, even in harsh desert environments, also create a conundrum for what to do with them when they come down.
The blades can be as long as a football field. And they’re made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and fiberglass that’s virtually impossible to separate.
That’s why, last year, the federal government launched the Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize, offering companies a total of $5.1 million by this summer to kick-start a sustainable recycling industry for wind turbines.
It’s also why Kowalski of Canvus said his company is harvesting, not breaking down, a blade’s tough structure.
When a blade becomes available, Canvus sends a contractor out to slice it into 50-foot sections and transport those sections to the company plant in Ohio. There, Canvus can turn a 150-foot blade into up to 50 pieces of durable outdoor furniture. And any remaining material is sold to thirdparty companies that shred it for use in cement kilns or as aggregate to build roads.
There may not be enough demand for benches and planters to account for the 2.2 million tons of wind turbine blade waste the National Renewable Energy Laboratory predicts will come by 2050. But in Europe, Kowalski noted the blades are being used to build bridges, sound barriers and all sorts of durable structures.
One use on Kowalski’s personal wish list? Having an artist commission retired blades for an art installation at the Coachella music festival.
“We want to turn a problem into an opportunity that inspires people.”