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G20 nations have targets of 20–50%.

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Despite informal pressure to bring forward its 2070 net-zero target, India is unlikely to do that at this year’s G20 summit India took over the presidency of the G20 – the grouping of the world’s 20 biggest economies, which collectively account for 75-80% of global GHG emissions – in December 2022. At the transition of the presidency from Indonesia to India, the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, said the challenges of “climate change, terrorism, and pandemics can be solved not by fighting each other, but only by acting together”. With control of 84 per cent of the global economy, G20 nations are the world’s driving force for development and growth. This is a good thing. However, while acknowledging the diversity and different development paths within G20 nations, this strength and influence also makes the bloc largely responsible for many of the environmental issues facing the world today. In India, especially among civil society organisations, the focus is less on the date of the...

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PV Panel recycling technologies

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  Solar power is booming, with millions of metric tons of solar panels being produced each year. A panel has a projected lifespan of about 25 years, which means that today’s new solar farms will go out of service in the late 2040s. Most of the weight in a solar panel, about 75 percent, is glass, aluminum, with 10 percent; wiring in a junction box, at 5 percent; and silicon, with just 3.5 percent. Dedicated recyclers are needed, the authors write, to do a more thorough job of recycling all the components of a panel—including the crystalline silicon in the photovoltaic cells themselves. Silicon wafers account for about half the cost of a panel, as well as over half the energy and carbon footprint of manufacturing a panel. But silicon isn't currently being targeted for recycling much because the recovered silicon isn't pure enough to go straight back to a wafer manufacturer. Studies show that the impurity levels are an important issue during the recycling processes.  Th...

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