Europe is a leader in the fight against climate change and in the clean energy transition. Solar energy is the key renewable energy source to achieve this green transition in the EU. The European Green Deal and the Critical Raw Materials Act are a package of European policies aimed at making the EU climate-neutral by 2050, promoting sustainable economic growth and addressing the EU’s dependency on critical raw materials.

TRUST-PV, PHOTORAMA, RESiLEX, ICARUS, and CIRCUSOL are European-funded projects that work together to implement innovative solutions through the photovoltaic (PV) value chain. The main targets focus on developing eco-design innovations, ensuring sustainable operation and maintenance, experimenting and assessing reuse practices, and providing technological solutions for waste manufacturing and End-of-Life (EoL) waste management.

The Five projects have worked together to put forward a series of Policy recomendations that would help creating a more favourable industrial environment for the PV industry and recycling sector. They are summarized below, while you can read the full set of recomendations in this document.

🎯 Support development of an international standard to foster reuse of PV modules and grow a PV reuse market

🎯 Create a dedicated category for PV waste in the WEEE directive 2012/19/EU

🎯 Support new and existing industries to ensure a fully European silicon value chain for the PV sector

🎯 Support implementation of a full Circular Economy Framework for processing and refining PV manufacturing waste

🎯 Promote regulatory requirements incentivizing circularity and recovery of critical raw materials