Webinar: Circular Roadmap for Solar Panels in Sweden

How can Sweden create better conditions for extending the lifetime of solar panels, retaining material value, and improving the way responsibility and data are managed in practice?

Welcome to a concluding webinar where the CircSolar project will present a circular roadmap for solar panels in Sweden. The webinar is aimed at stakeholders and interested parties across the Swedish solar panel system, including installers, retailers, recyclers, industry associations, public authorities, producer responsibility organisations, researchers, and other relevant actors.

Solar energy plays an important role in the climate transition, and deployment continues to grow. At the same time, the systems surrounding solar panels need to evolve in step with the market. The webinar will highlight how research, industry, and other stakeholders can contribute to longer product lifetimes, increased material recovery, and clearer responsibilities in practice.

During the webinar, we will present key insights from CircSolar and the roadmap developed through collaboration between researchers and actors across the value chain. We will share experiences from both research and practice and discuss the solutions that need to be developed for Sweden to make the most of the window of opportunity that exists before larger volumes of end-of-life solar panels enter the system.

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Programme

The webinar will begin with an introduction to why CircSolar was initiated and why the issue of circularity for solar panels needs to be addressed now. This will be followed by research insights into the current system, different solar panel flows, and the barriers that cause functional panels to risk becoming waste prematurely.

A central part of the webinar will focus on three priority action areas:

1. Extending the use of functional solar panels
   How can we create better conditions for solar panels with remaining functionality to stay in use for longer, and what solutions are needed to preserve their value over time?
2. Retaining material value
   How can specialised material recycling be developed step by step, and what role can collaboration with existing European recycling capacity play in the initial phase?
3. Producer responsibility, data, and common rules of the game
   How can clearer responsibilities, improved statistics, and more reliable data create better conditions for reuse, logistics, and recycling over time?

The webinar will conclude with a forward-looking discussion on what is required to move from roadmap to action. The focus will be on how researchers, industry actors, recyclers, public authorities, and other stakeholders can work together to support a more circular solar panel system in Sweden.