By Radha Rajagopalan
In Alberta, recycling an old television costs $2.75. Starting Oct. 1, recycling a solar panel — made of roughly 80 per cent glass, with an aluminum frame — will cost $14, nearly five times as much. That gap alone is hard to explain. It gets harder once you consider the timing: Alberta’s new fee charges solar panel owners today for waste that won’t materialize for another two decades, at a price nearly triple what independent research says the job will actually cost.
Since April 1, 2025, Alberta has classified solar panels and wind turbine electrical components as “electronics,” bringing them under the province’s mandatory recycling surcharge regime. The Alberta Recycling Management Authority (ARMA) says the fee is meant to fund future recycling costs, but it has not published a breakdown of how it arrived at $14, nor a comparison to fees for recycling other electronic products, leaving industry struggling to understand the rationale for a surcharge so far out of proportion to comparable items. The case for urgency is weaker still given the research on the panels themselves: The U.S.-based Solar Energy Industries Association fact sheet summarizing independent research found no leachates or hazardous byproducts from solar panels that pose a health concern.
The timing is hard to justify. The overwhelming majority of Alberta’s utility-scale and rooftop solar capacity was built in just the last few years, and with expected operating lives of 25 to 35 years, most of this equipment won’t need recycling until the 2040s and beyond. There is no looming wave of waste to justify an urgent, provincewide fee today.
The economics raise further questions. Independent research commissioned by CanREA puts the true present-value cost of recycling a solar module at roughly $5, once cost escalation over 20 years and the potential for panel reuse are factored in. Measured against that benchmark, ARMA’s $14 fee is nearly three times what the economics support, and it ignores the reuse pathways that would shrink the recycling burden even further.
A fee that overshoots the cost by that much feels downright punitive. And it’s Albertans, not the companies writing the cheques, who will ultimately pay, through higher electricity prices.
Before imposing a fee, government should have done the harder work first: develop certification standards for reused panels, establish collection and distribution pathways, and create market mechanisms that let reused equipment compete. The International Electrotechnical Commission is set to publish exactly this kind of guidance, which Alberta could have used as a foundation for a comprehensive framework. Instead, the surcharge came first, and the reuse infrastructure that would significantly reduce future recycling volumes was left for later, if at all.
Solar and wind are the only electricity generation types required to pay a recycling surcharge. That inconsistency sits uneasily against Alberta’s own commitment to fair, competitive and technology-neutral power generation.
Alberta also risks charging for the same thing twice. Utility-scale renewable energy projects already face reclamation security requirements under the province’s updated Code of Practice for Solar and Wind Energy Operations, which explicitly includes recycling and disposal costs. Layering ARMA’s surcharge on top of these requirements raises the prospect that operators and electricity consumers could pay twice.
Alberta has time to get this right. The province has two decades to build reuse standards, right-size this fee using real numbers and avoid singling out renewables for costs no other generation type bears. Imposing an inflated, single-industry fee now, decades before most panels need recycling and at nearly three times the estimated cost, is so far off the mark that it will ultimately take away consumer choice and drive up electricity costs.
Radha Rajagopalan is the director of policy for Alberta at the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, the voice for wind, solar and energy storage solutions that will power Canada’s future.
This op-ed was published in the Calgary Herald on July 17, 2026.