For almost 1 billion people worldwide and in many situations of our everyday-lives, sufficient access to clean electricity is lacking. At the same time, there is an exponentially increasing amount of solar panel waste, which turns into a threat to the global energy transition. In Europe, even functional solar panels are discarded, adding to the predicted solar waste crisis which is expected to exceed 80 million tons by 2050. SunCrafter tackles both problems, with one technological solution.
By applying reconfiguration technology and substituting diesel generators with solar generators, SunCrafter is able to save around 0.3kg CO2/kWh. They’ve estimated that providing all currently unconnected and displaced persons with 200 million of our solar generators would yield a savings of 22 million tons CO2/annually and represents 3 million tons of solar panel repurposing that would have gone to waste. Several studies on the LCA of new and second lie PV panels have shown that extending the life-time of panels drops the environmental cost of solar significantly.
