The solar industry is rapidly expanding. With growth predictions year after year being overshot and exceeding even the most ambitious scenarios, the energy transition is truly underway. However, despite the evident benefits such a transition brings, the solar industry is at risk of repeating the same mistakes of the past: exploitation, ecosystem destruction, and injustice. To ensure solar energy is truly sustainable, we must usher in a new era of fairness and transparency.
Despite silicon being the second most abundant element on Earth, the extraction and processing of silicon for use in solar panels is a complex process. As a result, specialized mines and processing plants have developed over the past decades across the world. The majority of these are located in the Xinjiang Uyghur region of China. This area has been tied to reports of forced labour, human rights exploitation, and the subjugation of ethnic minorities (Sheffield Report). The breach of human rights strongly clashes with the core values that Biosphere Solar strives to bring to the solar industry and market.
In today's world, ensuring 100% slavery-free products in the solar industry remains a challenge. This is due to a lack of transparency in supply chains, and a shortage of materials/products from suppliers that adhere to satisfactory labour and environmental standards. Continuously fighting for increased transparency, knowledge of material origins, and supporting companies that produce under fair labour standards is essential.
Biosphere Solar is determined to bring slavery-free solar panels to the world. To do this, we have embarked on a journey that we take step-by-step. We started by advocating on a political level for human rights and regulatory establishments. Now that production of Biosphere Solar’s circular solar panels has begun, we are engaging in conversations with suppliers and manufacturers to push for sourcing materials with slavery-free origins. Biosphere Solar is a strong supporter of European mining, where labour rights can be upheld, and is constantly on the lookout for opportunities to act on this.
At the end of the day, we know the solar industry is growing beyond expectations, and it is only the beginning. As the world transitions to renewables, we must ensure the people enabling this transition are treated with justice and fairness. Biosphere Solar believes in a world beyond exploitation, whether of people or land. Shaping the world today to ensure this future is what we are here to do.
Do you have any suggestions on how we can bring about a faster, fairer transition? Send us a message!
The planet is heating up, and our window of opportunity for tackling climate change and avoiding irreversible ecological and human catastrophe is rapidly closing. Solar energy is one of the leading solutions in the fight against climate change and energy poverty. However, the rapid expansion of this industry has brought forth new challenges: how do we ensure resource availability for generations to come, and how do we prevent enormous losses of materials in the products we design?
Some of the answers to these challenges lie in the circular economy - a model that emphasises the need for design for repairs, refurbishments and long lifetimes. A model that brings with it hope for resource efficiency, waste reduction, and ensuring the continuous reuse of materials. Unlike the traditional “take, make, dispose” linear economy where raw materials are extracted, transformed into products and eventually discarded as waste, a circular economy ensures materials and energy are not lost (Ellen MacArthur Foundation). In an industry like solar, which relies on finite resources, it is crucial that we bring forth a circular economy to match the energy transition.
The first step to establishing a circular economy is ensuring designs of products are made to be repaired, refurbished, and as a last resort recycled. For Biosphere Solar, this was our starting point: redesigning solar panels to ensure they are easy to repair, refurbish and recycle. Materials such as silicon, glass, and (precious) metals make up solar panels. Being able to use, reuse and recycle these materials is essential to ensure generations ahead of us have what they need to harvest the energy of the sun. By using the principles of a circular economy, the solar industry has the opportunity to provide not just a short term solution to our climate crisis, but a lasting legacy for centuries to come.
The past century brought forth an era in which innovation was driven by competition, with companies guarding their intellectual property to maintain a competitive edge. But we are in the 21st century, and a new paradigm is emerging—one where collaboration, rather than competition, is the key to unlocking the potential of technology to address global challenges. A paradigm where prosumers and customers expect more from companies than closed-doors and black boxes. Open source hardware embraces the principles of transparency, shared knowledge, and collective problem-solving. It is at the forefront of this movement. In a global world like ours, collaboration is truly the new competition.
The concept of Open Source has revolutionized the software industry, with few companies now succeeding through closed-source models. In the hardware sector, this movement began in the early 2000s and has been steadily gaining momentum worldwide. Open Source Hardware involves the design and development of physical devices that are publicly shared, allowing anyone to study, modify, distribute, and use them without restrictions. Unlike traditional hardware, open source hardware is founded on the belief that innovation and consequent gains of a company can be significantly accelerated through collaboration and the free exchange of ideas.
By making our hardware designs widely available through open-source licenses and patents that pledge to distribute knowledge without legal repercussions for non-commercial use, we empower a global community of innovators, engineers, and entrepreneurs to contribute to the development of circular solar panels. An open source approach not only accelerates innovation but also democratizes access to the tools and technologies needed to combat climate change. It fosters a culture of collaboration, shifting the focus from competition to working together towards a common goal.
We invite everyone to further scrutinise, test, and improve our designs. Transparency is key to ensure that technologies being developed are safe, effective, and aligned with the goal of mitigating climate change and bringing good into this world. If you feel we could be doing a better job, let us know how!
DOWNCYCLING & WASTE
$15bn in precious materials landfilled by 2050
ECOTOXICITY
PFAS, Lead, & Antimony going into our ecosystems
INTRANSPARENCY
No visibility on human rights and pollution
We envision is a world where all solar panels can be taken apart, and all components and materials are traceable
Biosphere Solar tackles climate change in 2 key ways:
RAPID SCALING
Biosphere Solar is reshaping the way PV modules are manufactured. We already achieve 80% CAPEX saving on the encapsulation process (2024) and will continue to bring down manufacturing costs
We are creating a solar industry that is:
Interested in joining our team? Send us an open application!
