The world is sprinting towards a renewable future. Solar panels glitter on rooftops, wind turbines pierce the skylines, and electric vehicles hum on our streets, writes Professor Datuk Ahmad Ibrahim who is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya for the Malay Mail.
“We rightly celebrate every gigawatt of clean energy installed as a victory against climate change. But in our urgent race to decarbonise, we are hurtling towards a new environmental crisis, one hidden in plain sight: a massive waste problem,” he noted.
One research, a comprehensive review of the circular economy within the renewable energy sector, reveals a troubling paradox. While we are building a green energy system for the future, he noted, we are doing so with a largely linear, “take-make-dispose” model from the past. The solar panels and wind turbine blades we install today are the landfill challenges of tomorrow – and that “tomorrow” is arriving much sooner than we think.
These are not simple materials he stressed; they are complex composites of glass, silicon, rare earth elements, plastics, and resins. Burying them in landfills is not just an environmental travesty; it’s an economic folly, a reckless squandering of valuable critical materials.
There are gaps that need to be bridged
He then identified three critical gaps that are preventing a circular transition. Read more here.
