PV Recycling in China: Potential Governance Pathways to Handle Future Photovoltaic Waste

Abstract

This thesis investigates the emerging challenge of photovoltaic (PV) module endof-life (EoL) management in China, where most retired panels are currently stockpiled, landfilled, or dismantled informally despite the projected surge of tensof millions of tons of waste by the 2030s. Employing an exploratory andinterpretive research design, the study integrates policy document analysis,secondary literature, field observations in Shandong Province, and expertinterviews. Findings are structured through a dimensional mapping frameworkthat traces technological, economic, and governance interactions. Resultsindicate that technical barriers, such as encapsulant chemistry and moduleheterogeneity, are compounded by persistently negative recycling economicsshaped by transport costs, low material value, and the cheaper alternative oflandfilling. These constraints, however, are not merely technical or financial butare actively configured by governance practices characterized byexperimentation, pilotism, and what this study conceptualizes as “controlledindeterminacy”. This governance logic enables adaptive learning and rapidscaling, but also risks postponing decisive action until waste volumes peak. Thethesis concludes that governance, rather than technology or economics alone,constitutes the decisive lever in shaping China’s PV recycling trajectory, withimplications for global PV circularity and the credibility of solar energy as asustainable pillar of decarbonization.