Abstract
One neglected socio-cultural and political dimension to the rapid diffusion of solar power in Sub-Saharan Africa is the question of what happens when things fall apart. Investors in the small-scale renewable energy sector are increasingly concerned with the status of broken or non-functioning products and there is an emerging consensus around the need for centralised recycling systems as the solution to future flows of ‘solar waste’.But what does the afterlife of off-grid solar products look like from below? Grounded in anthropology, geography and economic sociology, this paper tracks the impact of off grid solar products through contexts of breakdown, repair, and disposal. Combining stakeholder interviews, a longitudinal survey of product failure rates in Kenya and ethnographic research at a repair workshop in the town of Bomet, we challenge narratives of energy transitions that fail to address the environmental consequences of mass consumption and present an alternative approach to solar waste embedded in cultures and economies of repair.
Highlights
Global sales of off grid solar devices reached 130 million between 2010 and 2017 [2]. Assuming half of these devices are discarded after 3–4 years, current estimates suggest that up to 26.2 million off grid solar devices could be out of use by 2017 [2, p. 175]. Such numbers suggest that the material politics of ‘solar waste’ needs to become part of the discussion about clean energy transitions in Sub Saharan Africa
The problem, we argue in this paper, drawing from research traditions in social anthropology, geography and sociology is no longer that no-one is talking about solar waste
The and concluding, section of the paper offers some suggestions for future pathways that might better acknowledge, if not chaperone, the wider transitions and impacts that off-grid solar market is having on repair ecosystems across sub-Saharan Africa
Summary
The Global Off Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA) was formed in 2012 as a not-for-profit industry body representing the interests of solar powered lighting companies selling products in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia. In its report from the conference, the Global Off Grid Lighting Association’s laid out several steps These included: a continued commitment to formal and regulated recycling processes; the building of links between repair and recycling activities and the development of an understanding that ‘waste has a value’ [33: p. The terms of reference acknowledged the need to address the likely scale and impacts of electronic waste (“e-waste”), including battery waste from off grid energy systems, as the household solar sector expands. This report introduced new kinds of waste management expertise, concepts and paradigms into the solar industry These introduced new methodologies for the calculation of waste, new ways of imagining and envisioning waste, and new solutions focused on the idea of ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ (that hinges on producers or manufacturers making a financial contribution to cover the collection and recycling of products at the end-of-life). As we show, this emerging consensus displaces ‘alternative waste management practices and skills’ and pushes them to the ‘margins’ [6, 564]
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