As India races toward its target of 300,000 MW of installed solar capacity, a quieter question is starting to draw attention: what happens to solar panels once they wear out? Jaideep “Jai” Malaviya, a 35-year veteran of the solar industry, has spent much of the last several years trying to answer it — and he believes the industry is running out of time to get it right.
Malaviya is Managing Director of Malaviya Solar Energy Consultancy, a former Board Director of the International Solar Energy Society, and founder and CEO of the Solar Thermal Federation of India. He is also an active Rotarian involved in Rotary’s environmental sustainability efforts, including a Million Solar Panels Challenge program that India currently leads.
According to Malaviya, the scale of India’s solar buildout means an enormous volume of panels will eventually reach end of life, made up almost entirely of materials classified as critical. He was part of the government of India’s regulatory working group that drafted the country’s mandatory solar panel recycling guidelines, which took effect on April 1, 2022 — one of the first frameworks of its kind aimed specifically at solar hardware.
Now his company is moving from policy to practice. Malaviya Solar Energy Consultancy has secured the exclusive Asian licensing rights to an award-winning solar panel recycling process developed by Lux Chemtech of Germany, and plans to stand up the first recycling line built on that technology in India in the near future. As part of that effort, Malaviya intends to work through Rotary’s network to have local Rotarians help collect and donate end-of-life panels to feed the recycling line — turning a waste-management challenge into a community project.
Malaviya has also applied for recognition through Earth X for this work, and recently had a poster on the project accepted for presentation at EU PVSEC 2026, a leading European photovoltaic science and engineering conference.
For organizations like Loopway, built around the idea of keeping materials in use rather than in landfills, Malaviya’s work is a useful case study: a national policy shift, an industry veteran with the technical background to act on it, and a licensing deal that brings proven recycling technology into a market about to need it at scale.
Those interested in learning more can watch Malaviya’s presentation on the project on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GaoCwX0OvI), or read the press release on the Lux Chemtech licensing agreement (https://www.ptinews.com/press-release/malaviya-solar-energy-obtains-exclusive-licensing-agreement-for-solar-panel-recycling-from-luxchemtech-germany/3168034). Malaviya can be reached directly at +91-9890033399.
Source: correspondence with Jaideep Malaviya, Managing Director, Malaviya Solar Energy Consultancy, August 19, 2026.