Nothing in this world is black and white. Nothing is 100% renewable.
Renewables are a classification that generally only implies that there’s no material that is spent/burned/fully degraded during normal daily operation. And of course you can recycle some of the materials at end of life.
How much depends on our technology. We don’t really know how recyclable the solar panels we produce today are because they will be recycled with the technology we have in 20-30 years. I suspect we will be able to recycle almost 100% by then. There are already companies that have processes that can get very high recycling rates at a decent cost today. And I think all the technology around processing/reprocessing materials will improve exponentially in the coming decades, because most of the capital that went to oil/gas will go in that direction instead going forward. The success of countries will not be based on how much oil they can get their hands on, but on how much useful materials they have and how well they can recycle them.
I think countries that don’t transition EVs now are making a huge mistake simply because the wealth of countries in a couple of decades will be measured in no small part by how much copper is within the country, since that will determine how much the country can do in terms of transportation and industry.
BizarroLand
At a very technical viewpoint, everything is recyclable.
However, for many materials, the cost and wastes attached to recycling them may be so much greater than the costs of disposing of them and using raw materials to recreate them that it is not worth it to recycle them.
Renewables are a classification that generally only implies that there’s no material that is spent/burned/fully degraded during normal daily operation. And of course you can recycle some of the materials at end of life.
How much depends on our technology. We don’t really know how recyclable the solar panels we produce today are because they will be recycled with the technology we have in 20-30 years. I suspect we will be able to recycle almost 100% by then. There are already companies that have processes that can get very high recycling rates at a decent cost today. And I think all the technology around processing/reprocessing materials will improve exponentially in the coming decades, because most of the capital that went to oil/gas will go in that direction instead going forward. The success of countries will not be based on how much oil they can get their hands on, but on how much useful materials they have and how well they can recycle them.
I think countries that don’t transition EVs now are making a huge mistake simply because the wealth of countries in a couple of decades will be measured in no small part by how much copper is within the country, since that will determine how much the country can do in terms of transportation and industry.