A Recycling System for Sustainable Management of Waste Solar Photovoltaic Panels in Taiwan

In order to achieve the target of nuclear-free homeland by 2025, the cumulative installed capacity of renewable energy is targeted to 27.423 GW in 2025 in Taiwan. Under policy promotion with 20 years guaranteed fixed-in-tariffs (FITs), the installed capacity of solar photovoltaic (PV) has been quickly accumulated to approximately 3 GW by 2018. The solar PV modules are estimated around 200,000 tons cumulatively that further generatewaste solar PVpanels 3000 tons cumulatively by 2018. Although the accumulated amount of waste solar PV panels is very small, it has brought attention of environmentalists. How to manage discarded solar PV panels to prevent potential pollution has become an important issue for Environmental Protection Association (EPA) of Taiwan. This study intends to estimate installed capacity of solar PV by regression analysis, to conduct a cost-revenue analysis of recycling solar PV panel wastes based on Taiwan's existing technology and recycling environment, and further to carry out a feasible and sustainable waste recycling system for waste solar PV panels under current 4-in-1 recycling program. Some policy suggestions are provided to EPA of Taiwan for their future policy-making on recycling solar PV panel wastes.