A CA L L FOR ENG I NE E R S
SAV I NG T H E WOR L D I N T I ME S OF C R I S I S
A CA L L FOR ENG I NE E R S
SAV I NG T H E WOR L D I N T I ME S OF C R I S I S
Circular Economy and Photovoltaics By 2050, there will be over 60million tonnes of waste Si-PV that must be dealt with
Did you know the UK produces 200million tonnes of waste each year?
Circular Economy
Discouraging the Throwaway Culture Dr Gavin Bunting
Listen to their podcast www.swansea.ac.uk/ research/podcasts/ circular-economy/
Dr MatthewDavies
Are you guilty of buying something new instead of getting it repaired ? Or upgrading your phone and leaving your old one in the drawer ? Did you know the UK produces 200million tonnes of waste each year and that one quarter of that goes to landfill ? Dr Gavin Bunting, Associate Professor and Deputy Director for Innovation and Engagement here in Engineering explains what the Circular Economy is, how organisations can implement the principles, and how we can all start changing our habits to discourage the current throwaway culture and start becoming users – not consumers. Resources that we need for critical applications such as power generation, medical devices, cars, batteries are becoming more scarce, so should we be using these resources as if they are infinite ? Or should we be thinking about the future ? It certainly is a tough one, as
we have all been in that situation when our phone, printer, washing machine has broken, we weigh up the pros and cons, and it’s just cheaper to buy a new one than to repair or upgrade it. In fact, we’re often encouraged to buy new – and frequently too – as it seems like products are not robust or made to last longer than a few short years. But why should this be the case ? What is the solution ? One way to tackle this excess waste would be to move to a Circular Economy where products are designed to be durable, straight- forward to repair or upgrade, and easy to recover and recycle raw materials at the end of the product’s life, instead of having them go to landfill. Another mentality we could change is not owning things and choosing to rent or lease instead, becoming users as opposed to consumers. This change of business model really gives companies the incentive to ensure their products are robust or easy to repair so that they last longer, as they still
own it and will get it back at the end of the product’s life. Whereas currently, we are sold products and companies hope they never see it again. As engineers, we can be at the forefront of designing products and infrastructure for the circular economy, allowing for refurbishment and re-use, developing new materials, extracting useful resources from natural materials and understanding where opportunities are in a product’s lifecycle to reduce waste or emissions. So next time you go to buy something, ask yourself, can it be repaired ? Can the materials be recycled ? How long is it designed to last for ? Do you need to buy it ? Can you rent the product ? As consumers, we can help drive this area forward by purchasing or renting products that are durable, easy to repair and made of materials that are easy to recycle.
The development and deployment of sustainable renewable energy technologies is vital to our transition away from fossil fuel energy sources towards a clean-energy future. However, although viewed as ‘green’, there are significant environmental impacts associated with renewable energy technologies. In our effort to tackle climate change quickly, it is important to ensure that renewable energy itself is also sustainable. The cost of photovoltaic (PV) technology has plummeted with silicon PV (Si-PV) now cost-competitive, and in some locations cheaper than fossil fuels, resulting in dramatic growth in their use. The average lifespan of a Si-PV module is around 25 years, but when solar panels no longer work, they are not currently easy to recycle. By 2050, there will be over 60million tonnes of waste Si-PV that must be dealt with. We could decouple the economic growth
of the sector from the consumption of primary raw materials so we can deploy increasing volumes of PV technology without the need to dig materials out of the Earth. Currently, PV supplies roughly 3% of global electricity, but this is already dependent on high quantities of critical materials (such as indium and tellurium). These materials are also used in other important renewable and/ or energy efficient technologies – we need to avoid renewable technologies competing for materials as this will limit our ability to respond to climate change. Widespread deployment of PV technologies must come with transition to a ‘circular economy’, in which materials are kept in service for as long as possible at the highest value possible. For Si-PV, this obviously needs to be done retrospectively but for emerging technologies, like the ones we work on here at Swansea University, we believe this is an opportunity to develop
and design the next generation of photovoltaic technology with circular economy and end-of-life in mind from the start. Our SPECIFIC project aims to hasten the commercialisation of the next generation of sustainable renewable energy technology. We are working on alternatives to traditional Si-PV; investigating the use of low-cost, printable, earth-abundant materials. One challenge that we are trying to address is the eco-design of devices so that they can be remanufactured into new devices at the end of life using as much of the original device as possible. This will minimise the use of critical materials and ensure the economic growth is not intrinsically linked to carbon emissions. We aim to deliver maximum benefit to society and develop truly ‘sustainable’ renewable energy technology.
ENG I NE E R I NG AT SWANS E A UN I V E R S I T Y
ENG I NE E R I NG AT SWANS E A UN I V E R S I T Y
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