Building A Solar Power Economy in Africa via Fair Trade Recycling and Secondhand markets: BossBaby Part 1

Building A Solar Power Economy in Africa via Fair Trade Recycling and Secondhand markets: BossBaby Part 1

There is a huge amount of solar panel recycling news occuring in 2021.  It has been challenging for me to blog any updates, it is such a moving target.

Today however I have to post a response to Uganda's President Yoweri K. Museveni's Wall Street Journal Op-Ed criticizing Solar and Wind power assistance.  I know the Editors write the headline, so they need to be called out for allowing him to bury the lead. 

Nowhere in the article does Museveni present any evidence of "backlash". He's asking for a handout. If we offer solar panels for free, but are silent to your request for a free coal fired utility, that's kind of a "Boss Baby" African Privileged Sector response.

BossBaby Museveni is demanding handouts for coal. Not to put too fine a point on my response - 

Go pound sand.


OPINION
COMMENTARY

Solar and Wind Force Poverty on Africa
Letting us use reliable energy doesn’t mean a climate disaster.

By Yoweri K. Museveni Oct. 24, 2021 2:13 pm ET

@KagutaMuseveni twitter feed promoting his op-ed supports my suspicion that he had some help writing this... it has the fingerprints of Petrochemical Industry lobby seeding doubts about solar.

*linked to my comment at WSJ Comments section... but don't dive too deep, WSJ commenters are notoriously sharp elbows.

Thesis: Secondhand Solar Voltaic Panels will set off the same controversy and spiral of "reuse" vs. "exporting harm" that CRT and flip phone reuse and ink cartridge refills set off two decades ago.  Raw Material companies, OEMs, and Anti-gray-market Alliances will try to use #charitableindustrialcomplex (rightly criticized by BossBaby Museveni) to denigrate the Tech Sector in Emerging Markets.  But the reuse genie is too big to put back in the bottle (at least, until 2038 there should be a vibrant secondhand market). 

The future of reuse of solar panels is sunny.

Not many people have been as big a critic as yours truly of the Western patriarchy and its privileged "let them eat cake" Secondhand Colonialism. This blog is about do-gooders not listening to supply and demand in emerging markets. #FreeJoeBenson

But here's the thing - while Africans rightfully are skeptical about Western AID, they are just as cynical, if not more so, of their BossBaby politicians and dictators.  

"Ugandans under the age of 35 - and that is more than three-quarters of the population - have only known one president." - Patience Atuhaire, BBC News, Kampala

The young Africans are much more likely to be experts in cell phone repair than to be guerilla revolutionaries, terrorists, elephant poachers, blood diamond miners, or any of the other stereotypes that permeate Western profiles of the continent. That said, the only sustainable success I have seen on the content has been not through African government or Western AID, but through the same Geeks and Nerds in the Tech Sector who we saw build the Vietnamese economy.

The Critical Mass of Users in Africa rely on reuse, repair, and a Secondhand Economy. TV stations relied on used CRTs to build a client base to pay for themselves. Flip phones provided enough consumers to justify investments in mobile phone towers.

Will Africans "leapfrog" coal and oil fired utilities with Secondhand Solar?  I blogged about this last July... but there has been earthshaking confirmation of my suspicions then.

Last week, Northeast Recycling Coalition posted four Zoom Conference Presentations which show much more knowledge of Solar Photovoltaic Panel reuse potential, and the needs of Africa's electric grid, than BossBaby Moseveni's ghost writers.

Day 2, hour 2:30 kicks off the Good Point Recycling presentations (1-3 below).

1) We showed video of Good Point Recycling staffer's Vermont pilot "off grid solar" home, to demonstrate that even panels that look sabotaged, or are older than the most efficient, can work in "Secondhand" applications. 

2) We had an African Tech Sector expert, Emmanuel Nyalete, present background on Africa's historic electric grid - the first oil fired utility opened in the 1920s to serve the bauxite mining industry, the first hydroelectric dam opened in the 1960s, and how Ghana still suffers blackouts and brownouts after adding 4 hydroelectric projects... and needs solar it cannot afford new.

3) I presented findings from University of Rhode Island solar recycling expert Lennart Bonaszak and a report from MIT Technology Review... 

And on Day 3, minute 8...

4) Keynote address by our fav TED Talker Adam Minter not only touched on the decade plus findings in this blog (60 Minutes, Guiyu, and Agbogbloshie myths debunked), but specifically of the Star Wars Economy promises of reused solar panels in off-grid Africa. (starts Minute 8)

Solar Panels are very very expensive to grind up and "recycle", at least in a way that captures raw materials other than aluminum and steel.  But they are very, very difficult to break in a way that prevents reuse.

Here's the key takeaway - Banaszak confirmed that there's really no definition of "obsolescence" that makes any sense - even panels bashed with hammers can be used to generate more electricity in sunny Africa than they produced "fully fucntional" in New England.  But the cost of siting new solar farms (NIMBY) and increasing efficiency of panels will, by 2028, justify replacement of every single panel in the USA. 

They will essentially become like flip phones and CRTs... they will stop being traded in the OECD as the price has fallen for used panels from 45 cents per kilowatt to 15 this year.  But that price drop is a gold mine for Africa and Asia Tech Sector Reuse markets.

Links to Conference Recordings – Here are the links to the recordings from last week’s Conference.  These links are to be used by Conference registrants only.  Please do not share them with anyone else.

 

·         Day 1, 1^st Half https://nerc.org/documents/conferences/Fall%202021%20Conference/Day%201%201st%20half%20Oct.%2012.mp4

·         Day 1, 2^nd Half https://nerc.org/documents/conferences/Fall%202021%20Conference/Day%201%202nd%20half%20Oct.%2012.mp4

·         Day 2 https://nerc.org/documents/conferences/Fall%202021%20Conference/Day%202%20Oct.%2013%202021.mp4

·         Day 3, 1^st Half https://nerc.org/documents/conferences/Fall%202021%20Conference/Day%203%201st%20half%20Oct%2014.mp4

·         Day 3, 2^nd Half https://nerc.org/documents/conferences/Fall%202021%20Conference/Day%203%202nd%20half%20Oct%2014.mp4

 

Conference Presentations – The presentations have all been posted to NERC’s website

https://nerc.org/conferences-and-workshops/conference-and-workshop-presentations/fall-2021-presentations.