Albertans purchasing new solar panels next month will face a new hefty fee for recycling them.

Environment Minister Grant Hunter announced Thursday a ban on landfill disposal for the panels and the $14 recycling fee per panel beginning Oct. 1.

Hunter said the move will protect municipalities and taxpayers from future costs. He estimated that by 2045, most of the solar panels currently installed in the province will reach the end of their lives and could produce nearly 73,000 tons of material.

“We’re creating the opportunity for new made-in-Alberta recycling programs and industries that recover valuable materials instead of burying them,” he told reporters in Brooks.

The government estimates a typical household of 20 panels.

But industry associations and advocates have said the $14 price tag is far too steep, punitive and being imposed without clear accounting to back it up.

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They note it’s nearly five times the $2.75 cost of recycling a large television set in the province.

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Heather MacKenzie, executive director of renewables advocate Solar Alberta, said for a typical panel, a $14 fee is like adding a 10 per cent tax.

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In an interview, she said it’s yet another hit to the solar sector from a provincial government that appears intent on undermining it.

“It appears that the government of Alberta is artificially increasing the cost of solar, and that will enable natural gas to compete more easily in our marketplace,” she said.

She added that the impact will be significant.

“It’ll hurt all the small solar installation companies. It’ll hurt the electricians, and we will see job losses as a result.”

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When word of the fee trickled down to stakeholders from the Alberta Recycling Management Authority earlier this summer, MacKenzie said they pushed back, and asked how the $14 figure was reached.

“They are not willing to show how they came to that number, which means that nobody can really critique the assumptions that are embedded in it,” said MacKenzie.

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Independent research commissioned by the Canadian Renewable Energy Association put the cost of recycling a solar module at about $5.

Hunter, when asked how the province arrived at its cost, said the actual cost of shipping old panels to the United States for processing is $40 per panel.

He said it will also take time for recyclers to develop “economies of scale,” and if they can do it for cheaper, then that price will be passed on to consumers.

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The announcement comes after a string of rule changes affecting renewable energy development from Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservatives.

In 2023, the UCP put a short-term moratorium on renewable energy project development before introducing strict new rules on where they can go. Subsequent reclamation fees for decommissioned projects were later criticized as too high.

Business Renewables Centre Canada — which works to help businesses and institutions reduce their emissions by connecting buyers and sellers of renewable power — said it supports a recycling fee but Alberta’s is higher than those of any other jurisdiction in the world.

“We’re disappointed to see the government saddle the industry with another disproportionate burden,” said director Jorden Dye in a Thursday news release.

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