In 2023, the scale of the photovoltaic recycling industry is relatively small, and the industry is in a small-scale pilot stage. According to Gangqi Cheng, director of Wind and Solar Equipment Recycling Committee of the China National Resources Recycling Association , in 2023, the scale of photovoltaic module recycling in China was about 60,000 kilowatts, with a total of 109,091 photovoltaic modules (operation losses are not included in the statistics). By the end of 2023, the cumulative volume of retired photovoltaic modules in China was about 90,000 tons .

The year 2024 will be a turning point for the industry, and the scale of the photovoltaic recycling industry began to show a growth trend.

The "2024 China Wind and Photovoltaic Equipment Recycling Industry Development Report" released by the Wind and Solar Equipment Recycling Committee of the China National Resources Recycling Association clarified the industry benchmark parameters for the first time: by the end of 2024, the total amount of retired photovoltaic modules in the country reached 4.9GW . Based on the weight of 70,000 tons per GW of modules, the cumulative production volume was about 340,000 tons . Combined with the 0.5% production line scrapping rate data of production enterprises , a full-caliber measurement model was constructed for the first time.

Therefore, it was estimated that the volume of retired photovoltaic modules in China in 2024 was 250,000 tons , which was nearly three times the cumulative amount of photovoltaic retirement in China by 2023 (90,000 tons).

According to the article "Recycling of Waste Photovoltaic Modules Still Needs to be Standardized and Industrialized" published on China Energy Network by Zhang Libo, professor of the School of Economics and Management of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Zhang Qin, deputy director of the Low Carbon Development Research Institute of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics , it is estimated that the amount of waste modules will be close to 3GW in 2025, and the cumulative retirement volume will reach 10GW .

Based on the weight of 70,000 tons of components per GW, it is estimated that the number of waste components will be close to 210,000 tons in 2025, and the cumulative retirement volume will reach 700,000 tons .

According to the forecast of the photovoltaic green supply chain, under the natural retirement scenario in China, the cumulative photovoltaic retirement volume will reach 1 million tons, 12 million tons and 55 million tons in 2030, 2040 and 2050 respectively; under the early retirement scenario, it will reach 4 million tons , 23 million tons and 66 million tons respectively.