If there’s one thing I’ve learned from 15 years of reading news stories about climate change and other environmental crises, it’s that few journalists ask good follow up questions. Given that climate change is just one of many devastating symptoms of catastrophic ecological overshoot that is radically degrading Earth’s ability to support life, you’d think asking good follow up questions would be an important part of the job. Apparently not.
Let’s take just one article from today as an example, and ask some of the follow up questions I wish the journalist had asked. The article is:
Solar panels — an eco-disaster waiting to happen? published June 4, 2023 at the BBC, by Daniel Gordon, from The Climate Question podcast
Lest you think I’m picking on Mr Gordon, I’m not — my frustration extends to just about every journalist reporting on climate change and other ecological issues. He just happens to be the author of the article I read this morning.
Gordon’s article begins with some basic facts about the growing number of solar panels and the waste generated when they are no longer useful, about 25 years after installation. We learn that the waste from solar panels will be a “waste mountain” — i.e. hundreds of millions of tons — by 2050 “unless we get recycling chains going now.”
The article quotes Ute Collier from the IEA, who says “We’re producing more and more solar panels — which is great — but how are we going to deal with the waste?” We learn later in the article that “[c]urrently there is not enough silver available to build the millions of solar panels which will be required in the the transition from fossil fuels.”
Follow up questions not asked: Why is producing more and more solar panels “great” if we have no way to deal with the waste? Why is producing more and more solar panels “great” if there’s not enough silver to build them, and we don’t have the recycling infrastructure in place to recycle the silver in existing solar panels?
Later in the article we learn that “the world’s first factory dedicated to fully recycling solar panels” will be opened this year in France.
Follow up questions not asked: Why has industry waited so long to tackle recycling solar panels? We know that the components of solar panels are non-renewable materials (like silver) that will eventually run out if they are not recycled, so why would industry, and the governments supporting industry, rush headlong, yet again, into building a global energy infrastructure that relies, yet again, on non-renewable materials without recycling programs in place?
The company, ROSI, opening the new facility dedicated to recycling solar panels “hopes eventually” to be able to “extract and re-use 99% of a unit’s components.” Later, we learn those working on recycling solar panels “are hopeful that, in the future, nearly three-quarters of the materials needed to make new solar panels — including silver — can be recovered from retired PV units and recycled — to help speed up production of new panels.”
Follow up questions not asked: There is a difference between “hope” and reality — what is the current capability for recycling solar panels? How much of the materials can realistically be recycled more cheaply than simply buying new materials (because we all know if it’s not cheaper to recycle, without stringent policies requiring use of recycled materials, it doesn’t happen)? What is the process for recycling, and how energy intensive and polluting is that process (because we all know that materials can be extremely energy intensive and toxic to recycle, e.g. metals in phones, batteries, and other eWaste)? How much of the materials, like silver, is lost in the recycling process (because if it’s > 0%, then the most we can hope for is to replace fewer solar panels than exist now, or new solar panels will always require new materials to be mined from the Earth, and these materials are non-renewable and finite)?
ROSI recovers materials like silicon, copper, and silver from solar panels by “painstakingly” taking apart the panels. The materials are “intertwined with other components” and “until now, it has not been economically viable to separate them.” Presumably, it has now become “economically viable” to separate and recover the materials because the price of these materials is increasing. Why the price of the raw materials is increasing is not asked. Soren, an organization that partners with ROSI and other companies to recycle solar panels, says that it took them three months to “decommission” the largest solar panel they’ve tackled so far.
Follow up questions not asked: What does “economically viable” mean here? How much did it cost the company for the 3 months to decommission that large solar panel? What must the minimum price of silver, copper, silicon, and other components be in order to support this expensive and time consuming recycling process? Why is the price of the raw materials rising? Could it be because the cost of diesel fuel required for mining the raw materials is rising? Could it be that the quality of ore extracted for these materials is declining? And back to an earlier not asked question related to how energy intensive the process is, what is the maximum price of the energy required to recycle these components that would allow the process to be “economically viable”?
Towards the end of the article, we learn that “so far, ROSI is the only company in its field to have scaled up its operation to industrial levels” and that “the technology is expensive. In Europe, importers or producers of solar panels are responsible for disposing of them when they become expendable. And many favour crushing or shredding the waste — which is far cheaper.”
Follow up questions not asked: Does “economically viable” mean recycling these materials is currently cheaper than “crushing or shredding” the panels? If so, are they still being crushed and shredded because there’s not enough recycling facilities? How many facilities would be required to recycle the current waste from solar panels? What happens to the crushed and shredded panels?
In 2022, France sold 232,000 tons of solar panels, and recycled 4000 tons of solar panels, leaving a total of 228,000 tons of solar panels not recycled. In other words, only 1.7% of solar panels are currently being recycled in France. We do not learn how many tons of solar panels ROSI’s dedicated facility in France plans to recycle.
Follow up questions not asked: How many tons of solar panels will ROSI’s facility be able to recycle? What happens to the 228,000 tons of solar panels not recycled, are they currently all crushed and shredded? If not, what else happens to them? Where is the waste stored? Is it put into landfill? What precautions are taken to make sure the waste does not contaminate the ground water and soil? How many facilities would be required to recycle the remaining 228,000 tons of solar panels? How many facilities will be required to recycle the 200 million tons (globally) of solar panels expected by 2050? How long will it take to develop and build these facilities? How much habitat will be destroyed and polluted in building new recycling facilities and in landfilling the non-recycled waste in the meantime?
From page 20 of “The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth”:
“Global peak silver production has already happened sometime between 1950 and the year 2000. 60% of all historical volume of silver has been mined since 1950 (Figure 21). The implications of the trend shown in Figure 16 to Figure 20 of decreasing grade is that more tonnes of ore needs to be mined for each unit of metal extracted. This drives the cost of mining up with each associated task, from drilling and blasting, excavation, haulage, crush and grinding and beneficiation (flotation or leaching).”
Question not asked: Assuming that most solar panels globally will continue to not be recycled in part or in full over the next few decades, which seems like a fair assumption since “intensive recycling of solar panels is still in its infancy” and it takes years to build industrial facilities like recycling facilities, and decades to build many of them, and global silver extraction has peaked and is declining, where will the silver to build solar panels come from? Same with copper: “Copper resources alternatively are massive in size, very poor quality, requiring vast amounts of energy to process,” from page 39 of “The Mining of Minerals and the Limits to Growth”. So where will the copper come from?
Let’s go back to the quote from the IEA’s Ute Collier — “We’re producing more and more solar panels — which is great — but how are we going to deal with the waste?”
Followup questions not asked: How will all these new solar panels be connected to the grid? In the US more than 8100 energy projects were waiting for permission to connect to electric grids at the end of 2021 (NY Times), and in the UK solar projects “are facing waits of up to 15 years” to get connected to the grid (The Guardian). How is producing more solar panels “great” if recycling is in its infancy, the recycling facilities largely don’t exist so 98.3% of waste materials from solar panels is not being recycled, the panels that are being built can’t even be connected to the grid in the US and in the UK, and nothing in this article has really answered the question — the whole point of the article — how are we going to deal with the waste?
This article focuses on the waste of used up solar panels. What about the waste produced by the supply chains in manufacturing the solar panels? The journalist asks no questions about this at all. This article is about the other end of the lifecycle, but the question of waste and environmental destruction in supply chains is vital if industry and governments really are going to attempt to “replace” fossil fuels with other ways of generating electricity, like solar panels and wind turbines.
We cannot separate the waste generated by used up technology from the bigger picture of environmental destruction caused by building that technology. Given that climate change is just one of many environmental crises industrial culture has caused and continues to cause, understanding the impacts of these technologies and the waste and pollution generated at all stages in the lifecycle on wildlife habitat, species, water, air and soil is critical.
Perhaps the most important follow up question of all — the question that renders all other questions moot — is never asked or answered in any of these articles, and that is: What will these “clean” technologies be used to power? The answer is, of course, obvious: this ecocidal way of life that has caused catastrophic ecological destruction, pollution, and overshoot. Until journalists start asking this question in every article they write about climate change, energy, and technology, they are failing utterly to do their job.
This is brilliant. It asks all the questions climate journalists should be, but are not, asking.
I had a similar reaction to the BBC article, and was thinking of responding to it when I noticed your substack piece. So instead I linked to your critique at the end of a short substack piece, about the dumping of offshore oil installations in the 1990s. A similar failure to ask the right questions.