China Issues Guidelines to Promote Comprehensive Utilization of PV Modules Amid Upcoming Retirement Wave

It was learned on March 3rd that six departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Comprehensive Utilization of Photovoltaic (PV) Modules" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guiding Opinions"), setting clear goals for the industry. By 2027, the green production level of PV modules will be further improved, the application scale of comprehensive utilization products of waste PV modules will be expanded in key fields such as metal smelting, equipment manufacturing and building materials production, a number of backbone enterprises in the comprehensive utilization of waste PV modules will be cultivated, and the cumulative comprehensive utilization of PV modules will reach 250,000 tons. By 2030, a closely coordinated, rationally distributed comprehensive utilization capacity for waste PV modules will be formed to cope with the large-scale retirement wave.

Industry insiders point out that the policy directly addresses the upcoming PV module "retirement wave", promotes the construction of a green circular development system for the PV industry, and will spawn a large-scale emerging industrial track.

It is understood that China’s PV installed capacity has ranked first in the world for many consecutive years, reaching 1200GW by the end of December 2025. As early PV modules gradually reach the end of their service life, a large-scale retirement wave is approaching. It is predicted that large quantities of retired PV modules will begin to be generated in China in 2025; after 2030, the amount of discarded PV modules will usher in a peak period, reaching about 18GW (approximately 1.4 million tons); by 2040, the cumulative discarded PV modules will reach 253GW (about 20 million tons).

The retirement peak has created an urgent demand for effective module recycling. Improper disposal of such a large number of discarded modules will not only cause waste of valuable resources such as silicon, aluminum, silver and copper but also pose potential environmental risks. The Guiding Opinions, with clear quantitative goals and a timetable, provide clear guidance for industrial development. Focusing not only on end-of-life recycling, the policy also emphasizes creating conditions for green recycling from the product design stage, reflecting the concept of full-life-cycle management.

For example, the Guiding Opinions require improving the ease of disassembly and utilization of PV modules and increasing the proportion of recycled materials; promoting the orderly scrapping and retirement of PV modules and guiding relevant parties to standardize the delivery of waste PV modules.

To ensure green, safe, reliable and economical recycling, technological innovation breakthroughs and coordinated industrial chain layout are essential. The Guiding Opinions clearly propose promoting green and efficient disassembly and utilization, accelerating the research and development of high-efficiency PV module disassembly technologies, encouraging the development of non-destructive disassembly technologies, extracting silver from metal grids of crystalline silicon cells, extracting copper, lead, tin and other metal elements from welding strips and bus bars, and realizing graded and quality-based utilization of silicon in PV modules.

In promoting the coordinated development of the entire industrial chain for comprehensive PV module utilization, the Guiding Opinions focus on PV power station clusters in the northwest, east China and north China, promoting the large-scale development of the comprehensive PV module utilization industry, encouraging nearby and on-site comprehensive utilization to reduce transportation costs, and encouraging PV module manufacturers, PV power stations and comprehensive utilization enterprises to actively extend their industrial chains.

Notably, the Guiding Opinions also clarify measures to optimize the industrial innovation and development environment, including accelerating the formulation of management measures for the comprehensive utilization of industrial resources, supporting enterprises in the PV module comprehensive utilization industry to apply for manufacturing single champions, specialized and sophisticated enterprises and high-tech enterprises, encouraging qualified PV industrial parks to build "zero-waste parks", and accelerating the research and formulation of industry standards for the comprehensive utilization of waste PV modules.

The policy is expected to activate the PV module recycling and utilization market, spawning a large-scale emerging industrial track. As the industry enters a new stage of standardized and large-scale development, enterprises with environmental protection disassembly and high-purity material extraction technologies will usher in significant development opportunities.

A previously released white paper pointed out that under the scenario of early retirement, the cumulative domestic PV recycling market scale is expected to reach 26 billion yuan by 2030 and exceed 420 billion yuan by 2050.