With China's new energy industry upgrading and replacing old devices, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), National Energy Administration, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments released a policy document on August 17 to promote the recycling of decommissioned wind and solar power equipment.

"In recent years, China's new energy industry has developed rapidly. Wind power, photovoltaic (PV) and other new energy equipment are widely used, and the installed capacity ranks first in the world. With the acceleration of industrial upgrading and equipment replacement, a large amount of equipment will be decommissioned," an NDRC official said.

So the policy document, the first of its kind in China, set the goal of improving standards and specifications and making breakthroughs in key resource recycling technologies by 2025.

The policy focused on these aspects: promoting low-carbon product designs, establishing and improving the responsibility mechanisms for retired equipment, improving the equipment recycling system, and strengthening the resource recycling capacity.

Enterprises are encouraged to design products that are lightweight and easy to disassemble, transport and recycle.

Wind and PV power enterprises should be responsible for disposing of decommissioned equipment. They should not illegally discard the equipment in landfills or use other unauthorized means. Industrial solid waste should not be put into domestic waste collection facilities.

The policy stressed the necessity of increasing research and development (R&D) input to develop decommissioned wind and PV equipment recycling technology, and include relevant projects in the key national R&D plan.

It also asked for developing technologies to evaluate the residual life of wind and PV equipment, extract and recover rare metals from them, as well as re-manufacture wind equipment components.

Experts have lauded the recycling of retired wind and PV equipment as a move of great significance since it is the last link in the green low-carbon circular development of the wind and PV industry chain.