The energy transition marks the single largest effort in history to reduce industrial waste by pursuing the goal of burning zero fossil resources and replacing them with renewables – but it does not come without waste on its own. Germany has one of the biggest wind and solar power stocks in the world, which is also one of the oldest. Together with batteries from e-cars and storage systems, energy transition waste is set to reach massive scales in the next years, meaning the country will showcase what it means to get a grip on sustainably managing the green technology stock’s full life cycle. First attempts at the national and European level to better integrate recycling and circularity concepts into the energy transition have been dismissed as inadequate by environmental activists. But industry groups hope a bustling recycling market could also come to life without help, thanks to the immense value better recycled green technology has to offer.
For over two decades, debates about renewable power installations and electric vehicles in Germany have generally focused on a single question: how to get more of them on the market? Thanks to a wide array of support schemes and other investor incentives, this question to a large extent seems to have been answered with success – certainly for renewables, whose share in national power production climbed from just [..]
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Photo: PV Cycle