Solar Waste Handling in India

February 17, 2022

While India’s solar power capacity is increasing, the country does not have a proper policy on managing the waste that is being generated from solar panels and its manufacturing process.

Overview:

Currently, India considers solar waste as a part of its generated electronic waste and thus doesn’t account for it independently. Also, the nation doesn’t have any commercially operated raw material solar e-waste recovering facility.

In Gummidipoondi, Tamil Nadu, a facility has been set up for the purpose of recovering solar e-waste recycling and recovery albeit it is a private firm.

What needs to be done?

In India, solar waste is sold as scrap and it can lead to the increase of solar e-waste if proper recycling is not done. The government should divert its focus towards drafting a set of rules that will look into dealing with solar e-waste.

The life cycle of a solar panel is 20 to 25 years, so the problem we are facing is yet to come, but when it will eventually catch up the nation will be dealing with a huge problem with most of the landfills being filled with solar waste. Hence, drafting a policy dealing with this is a must.

Solar Energy Capacity in India

By this year, the government has a target of producing 100GW of solar energy. The nodal energy that looks into this is the Ministry of New and Renewable energy. India has a National Solar Mission whose aim is to establish the nation as the global leader in the field of solar energy. Production-linked Incentives have been brought forward to promote this sector.

PM Modi in association with the French President had launched the International Solar Alliance in the year 2015 with the vision of One World, One Sun, One Grid (OSOWOG).

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