What each government has done
Two governments are working the same problem on different clocks. The Commonwealth's National Solar Panel Recycling Pilot was announced by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy on 16 January 2026: $24.7 million over three years, intended to establish around 100 collection sites, recycle up to 250,000 end-of-life panels from households, businesses and solar farms, and generate the cost and logistics data behind any future mandatory stewardship scheme. An approach to market to engage a pilot administrator closed at 5pm AEST on 24 April 2026.
As at 17 August 2026, a Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water spokesperson told the ABC that procurement of the program had not been completed, while stating the government remains committed to the pilot. No administrator has been publicly named.
$17.8M
is what Western Australia committed in the 2026-27 State Budget to build a collection and recycling pathway for panels and embedded batteries, while the national pilot meant to establish the same costs sits in unfinished procurement
Western Australia's contribution arrived in the middle of that gap. The Cook Government's 2026-27 State Budget, announced 3 June 2026 under the Remade in WA banner, commits $17.8 million to solar panel and embedded battery recycling: $13 million to establish collection, transport and processing pathways for end-of-life panels from households and solar farms, $3 million to roll out embedded battery collection at local government facilities, and $1.8 million to support ongoing delivery of both programs.
| Stream | Allocation | What it funds |
|---|---|---|
| Panel collection | $13M | Collection, transport and processing pathways for end-of-life panels from households and solar farms |
| Battery collection | $3M | Embedded battery collection at local government facilities |
| Ongoing delivery | $1.8M | Ongoing delivery of both programs |
WA Government media statement, 3 June 2026. Figures are as announced in the 2026-27 State Budget; the program is not yet operating.
Why the sequence matters
The federal pilot exists specifically to produce the evidence a stewardship scheme would be built on: what it costs to collect a panel, transport it, and process it, tested across roughly 100 sites and up to 250,000 panels. WA's $13 million buys the same kind of infrastructure at state scale, for a dispersed and partly remote geography, ahead of that national evidence existing.
Neither figure is small enough to treat as a rounding error against the other, and neither was designed with reference to the other. Whichever program reports real per-panel cost data first becomes the number a national stewardship design has to reckon with, on a basis the other program did not choose.
What is not stated here, and why
Panel waste tonnage and recycling-rate figures are in wide circulation and were deliberately left out of this report. A House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water inquiry into solar panel reuse and recycling, referred on 19 January 2026, held a public hearing on 3 August 2026. Two witnesses at that hearing are reported giving different figures for the same current quantities: the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering citing panel waste rising past 100,000 tonnes a year by 2035 against roughly 17% of panel material currently recovered, and Environmental Solar Recycling Australia's managing director Chris Mohen citing about 59,000 tonnes now, rising to about 91,000 tonnes by 2030, against fewer than 5% of panels currently recycled.
Two witnesses at the same hearing citing different figures for current status is not two sources agreeing; it is the situation the verification standard behind this publication exists to catch. Reading the Hansard record or the written submissions directly, rather than press paraphrase of oral evidence, is the next step before either set of figures is usable here.
What to watch
- Whether a federal pilot administrator is appointed. Without one, the national cost evidence the pilot exists to produce does not exist.
- Whether WA reports recovered volumes by stream. Household and solar-farm panels arrive on different schedules; a single tonnage figure would conceal which one the $13 million is sized for.
- Whether the Smart Energy Council's WA installer survey, closing 9 September 2026, is published rather than used only internally. It is the one instrument currently gathering practitioner-level evidence on collection difficulty.
- Whether either government's figures are reconciled against the House inquiry's written submissions. Until then, current-status waste and recycling-rate figures should be treated as contested rather than settled.
Solar Analytica holds no data product for panel end-of-life volumes, collection infrastructure, or stewardship-scheme costs today. This report is the argument for reading that layer, not an output of it.