Solarplaza Summit | Recycling Renewables

Michiel van Schalkwijk is Managing Director of Solarwatt BV, Chair of ZRN’s Board and a Board Member of the OPEN Foundation. Michiel is a physicist and graduated in solar cell research in 1994. Since then, he has always worked in the solar energy branch. Michiel has co-authored subsidy programmes, set up and chaired a standards committee and managed international introduction programmes. Michiel is one of the founders of ZRN and has been its Chair since the very beginning. His idea behind setting up ZRN was to help enable as many producers in the Netherlands as possible comply with the recycling laws at acceptable costs.

Mathijs is the co-founder of Boldz, a Dutch startup dedicated to extending the life of solar technologies. Boldz is currently developing an innovative repair technique for glass breakage in solar panels, in collaboration with leading technical research institutes. By combining advanced research with practical, hands-on projects, Mathijs is committed to enhancing the circularity of the photovoltaic (PV) sector and make circularity tangible. His work is driven by the growing scarcity of critical materials and the pressing need for sustainable end-of-life solutions in renewable energy, fueling his ambition to make an impact on the industry.

Nicolas Defrenne is the CEO of Soren, the producer responsibility organization in charge of the collection, reuse and recycling of used photovoltaic panels. Soren implements a high-value-added recycling strategy, in order to regenerate the critical materials necessary for the energy transition and develop circularity for the renewable energy industry.

Isabelle Radovan joined EuRIC in June 2024. She holds a master’s degree in European Affairs from Sciences Po Lille and the University of Münster and is fluent in German, English and French. Prior to joining EuRIC, Isabelle had the opportunity to work on circular economy policies such as the Ecodesign Regulation (ESPR) through traineeships at the European Commission and the European Parliament. At EuRIC, Isabelle focusses on the work of the two metal branches, EFR and EUROMETREC.

Dr. Karsten Wambach (M), has been working as Deputy Managing Director at bifa Umweltinstitut GmbH in applied environmental R&D. He is educated as an environmental auditor, Waste Management representative and according to German Ordinance on specialized Waste Management Companies with more than 35 years of experience in different positions of the PV sector. Additionally, he has been working as freelance consultant on sustainable productions, environmental technologies and waste concepts since 2012. Before he worked for SolarWorld AG, Pilkington Solar International GmbH and Bayer AG in different positions of the PV value chain. He contributed to various recent studies about PV waste aspects and recycling, e.g. for IEA PVPS Task12, Canadian Standards Association and IRENA and to several EU and German R&D projects. He is initiator, co-founder and was first President of PVCYCLE Association (2007 -2011).

Pascal Leroy is the Director General of the WEEE Forum, an international association speaking for fifty-two producer responsibility organisations (PROs). PROs are entities, mandated by producers, that responsibly manage the collection, treatment and recycling of electrical and electronic waste from households and businesses. Every year, the PROs collectively collect in excess of 3 million tonnes. The PROs have operations in all five continents. The WEEE Forum’s why is to take on the worldwide societal challenge of e-waste through research and innovation projects, outreach to start-up PROs across the world, campaigns, #ewasteday, partnerships and offering tools and platforms to share best practices and optimise operations. Before joining the WEEE Forum, Pascal was chief lobbyist with APPLiA, the household manufacturers in Europe. He has also worked in the European Parliament.

Matteo is an innovation manager at Umicore, a leading materials technology company based in Belgium and globally which offers a wide portfolio of recycling solutions. In the current role, he is responsible for market & tech intelligence as well as business development for Umicore’s critical materials recycling, covering solar waste amongst other energy transition materials. Prior to his current appointment, he worked as metals and mining analyst at McKinsey & Company management consulting firm. Matteo holds a PhD in Materials Engineering from KU Leuven and a Master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from KTH and Grenoble INP.

Donald Balcaen is an electronics engineer with over 30 years of experience in product design and manufacturing within the telecom and IT industries. He holds a Master’s degree in Electronic Engineering from Howest in Belgium. His career began in small startups and expanded to midsize companies like Barco and multinational giants such as Cisco Systems. He has developed products, managed development teams, and led supply chain teams through transitions to Lean manufacturing methodologies, with a focus on design for manufacturing and product servicing. Nearly three years ago, Donald transitioned into business consulting, helping companies grow without heavy investments. His approach emphasizes working smarter, not harder, by implementing Lean practices across the entire business process chain. Recently, he joined Inverterservice in Belgium, where he leads the operations team. Inverterservice specializes in repairing and servicing electronic products, including solar panel inverters, battery chargers, and batteries. In everything he does, Donald strives to give my best. He believes there are no business problems, only challenges and opportunities.

Aizea joined FEAD in September 2021 as a Legal & Policy Officer. Aizea has a legal background in Spanish and German law and holds an LL.M. in European law, with a specialisation in environmental and energy law. Before joining FEAD, Aizea worked as a legal consultant dealing with environmental, health, and safety matters, as well as an in-house legal council. At FEAD, Aizea provides support and coordination on legal and policy issues, with a particular emphasis on EU environment and waste-related law, internal market, waste shipment, and competition.

Jan has a master’s in law and has taken additional courses at the Vlerick Management School and EHSAL in Belgium. For a few years, he worked as a manager in production and logistics in the meat industry and then moved to the waste industry. He worked in various positions at Van Gansewinkel, now Renewi, for 12 years where he accumulated much experience in setting up voluntary and mandatory collection systems for waste such as packaging, electric and electronic equipment, discarded tyres, cooking oil and fat, and waste oil. In 2008, he became the General Manager and, in 2016, a Board Member of PV CYCLE, the first collection system for solar panels in the world. Up to 2014, this system was voluntary and in 2014, it became a mandatory producers’ collective.

Dr. Hilton joined IHS Markit (now S&P Global) in 2020 and has eight years of experience in the clean energy sector. He focuses on clean energy technologies in Europe, Middle East and Africa and has a particular interest in how energy storage integrates with other industries. He has recently published work on recycling, energy storage for EV charging, vehicle-to-grid technologies, second life batteries and the use of batteries in hydrogen production. He leads the global forecast for energy storage. He has published articles in multiple well-respected journals, responded to government calls for evidence on energy storage and electric vehicles (EVs), and has been quoted in a range of media outlets. Dr. Hilton holds a first-class Master of Engineering degree in mechanical engineering and a PhD in energy engineering with a focus on energy storage integration with renewable energy and EV infrastructure, both from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.

Wim Van Opstal is a researcher at VITO, where he studies the development of circular business models and enabling policies for a circular transition. Examples of his current research include circular aspects of solar PV, textiles, bio-fertilizers, housing, adhesive bonding, and smart grids, and themes such as labour market policies, the informal circular economy, just transition, and market failures. His research entails business case analysis, survey-research, mapping value chains, backcasting, and policy analysis to support circular business model innovation. Wim is also affiliated with the Maastricht Sustainability Institute (MSI) at Maastricht University and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Circular Economy. Regarding solar PV, Wim was involved in the CIRCUSOL project, an Innovation Action project funded by the European Commission involving circular business experimentation on circular solar business models. Here, he mainly focused on customer acceptance in BtC, BtB, and BtG market segments for solar PSS models, PV reuse, and alternative end-of-life solutions.

Kahya joined Sunrock in 2021 as Operations Director Germany setting up the new business unit and bringing 16 projects of 45 MWp of Sunrock’s first EEG rooftop auctions in 2022. She implemented quality standards, HSE and all technical aspects of the contractual suits. In October 2022 she changed role to Technical Lead M&A and Strategy, supporting all Sunrock development business units in their growth. Further she is leading the environment working group (carbon, biodiversity, circularity) and is part of the ESG steering committee. Further she managed the Double Materiality Assessment under CSRD. She is an active member at Solar Power Europe and co-ordinates public affairs at Sunrock. Kahya has been working in the PV industry since 2004 with a focus on project management and operations as well as technical due diligence. Her working experience spans six European countries plus Canada and the Philippines. Kahya has started her career in BIPV projects and has built her expertise and specialization in rooftop PV plus ESG over the years.

Tomaso Charlemont graduated from the Technical Naval Institute (Genoa, Italy). He is an executive with over three decades of experience in Business Development and Supply Chain. After more than 20 years in the fields of data communication, he embraced a second career in renewables in 2008. Over the past 13 years Tomaso developed and consolidated his experience in this latter field of activity joining PV inverter OEMs Satcon and Chint Power Systems, WTG manufacturer and EPC Vergnet and British renewables developer RES. More recently, he joined BayWa r.e. where he coordinates the development of the Solar PV Revamping and Repowering business across the EMEA Region.

Stefan, co-founder and CEO of SecondSol, is at the helm of Europe's leading photovoltaic marketplace for new and used solar components. With over two decades of unparalleled experience in the solar industry, Stefan has an unrivalled understanding of the sector. Currently, he and the team at SecondSol are dedicated to building a robust ecosystem for PV spare parts, while actively promoting PV reuse and recycling. Their collaborative efforts are driven by a mission to promote sustainability and encourage responsible practices throughout the solar industry.

Arvid van der Heide obtained his degree in Applied Physics at the Groningen University in The Netherlands in 1995. He started working in the PV sector in 1997 at the solar energy department of ECN in the Netherlands (now TNO), as a researcher in Si solar cells, (specialising in characterisation). From 2005 until 2012 he worked at the R&D department of solar cell/module manufacturer Photovoltech in Belgium, both on cells and modules. From 2013 until 2016 he was working at Soltech, developing special modules, amongst others BIPV. Since 2016 he has been part of the PV research group at imec in Belgium. His current focus is cell/module characterisation, module development, agri-PV and the possibilities for re-use of PV modules. This mainly involves the creation of a list of requirements to determine whether modules are acceptable to be re-used, to ensure quality and safety. This activity started for him within the framework of the EU project Circusol. It is now continued within IEC TC82 with a project team that started in 2022 to create a technical report on the re-use of modules. This project team is led by Serge Noels in collaboration with Arvid. Serge has a lot of experience on standardisation in general, while Arvid is contributing based on his experience in solar module characterisation.

Driven by the desire to turn the solar industry into a circular economy, Jan Bargel founded SOLAR MATERIALS together with Fridolin Franke and Jan-Philipp Mai. The three met at TU Braunschweig in 2020, where Bargel studied mechanical engineering and combined their knowledge on business operations, engineering skills and over a decade of market knowhow. SOLAR MATERIALS has specialized in the recycling of solar panels by developing its own patented recycling process in which 98% of the raw materials, including silicon and silver, are recovered.

Peter Henatsch is a scientist at Fraunhofer CSP in Halle (Saale), working in the research area of Recycling. His work is focused on the analysis of recycling material, as well as the optimization and development of processing routes.

Mr Didszun graduated with degree in economics at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal in 1989. He started his professional career at Telenorma (now AVAYA) and as Project Manager he gained in 1991 his first experience in recycling old electrical and electronic equipment of Telenorma. In 1994 he switched to the recycling industry, and in 1998 he took over the management of the company as sole managing director. His company, RDE Rücknahmen Demontagen und Elektronik -Recycling GmbH, was one of the pioneers in the German market for the disposal of old electronic devices. Between 2002 and 2012, he was chairman of the professional association for electrical, scrap and vehicle recycling in the Federal Association for Secondary Raw Materials and Disposal (BVSE), where he represented this division in the Executive Committee. After the successful sale of the company, he started in 2014 as an independent consultant in e-waste challenges. He also became Lead Auditor for WEEELABEX and hence execute audits according to the CENELEC standard EN 50625 - Series in European e-waste recycling facilities. Since 2015, he is also a member of WG 06 for the development and further development of the CENELEC standards. Since 2015, he is Country Manager for PV CYCLE in Germany.

Mining Engineer specializing in Metallurgy. PMP®. Head for Materials Engineering and Renewable Energies Department within the Environmental Services Area of FCC Group. In his professional activity of more than 25 years, he has been focused on projects of industrial waste treatment plants as well as contaminated sites remediation. He is responsible for several research projects focused on the valorization, recycling and reuse of waste as materials in the framework of the Circular Economy. Professor in different masters / courses of the School of Industrial Organization EOI in Sustainability (Engineering and Environmental Management, in ESG sustainability, MBA Green & Tech) and co-director of the Master in Circular Economy.

Gian Marco Gioffré is the Sustainability Advisor at WindEurope. WindEurope is the trade association representing the European wind energy sector. Gian Marco coordinates the activities of the Working Group on Sustainability. His expertise includes material recycling, circular economy, and sustainable sourcing of (critical) raw materials. He holds a Master’s degree in European law and previously worked at the European Commission’s Climate, Infrastructure, and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA).

Britt’s varied background and practical experience converge in a broad skill set; she knows how to conduct thorough research on sustainability performance of organisations and products. She holds a master's degree in corporate sustainability and, among other things, worked as a researcher on circular business models. In the past five years, she has been helping companies in developing sustainable strategies and guiding manufacturers in shaping circular and more sustainable products. Her works involves conducting in-depth research on both environmental and social performance on manufacturing sites and beyond. The approach applied is based on the Cradle to Cradle philosophy and promotes the use of verified data throughout these processes to ensure high-quality data. At Sustenuto, activities also include support for upcoming EU regulations on sustainability. The mentioned approaches are instrumental for companies to prepare for upcoming Green Deal regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), Digital Product Passport (DPP), Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), and EU Forced labour regulation. Sustenuto helps companies navigate these regulatory shifts, ensuring compliance and promoting long-term sustainability. These developments emphasize the importance of producing more sustainable products, requiring value chain transparency and integrity.

Arnoud has been with the Quintas group since 2019, in the position of Quintas Advisory’s Head of Projects. He specialises in portfolio-wide, strategic projects, as well as those that are focused on quality assurance and control. Previously, he worked for the Foresight Group as Technical Director, overseeing the acquisition and operation of 65 solar assets. Arnoud holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Twente in The Netherlands and has received professional certification in project management.

With a communications and marketing background, Valérie Séjourné started her career in a couple of FMCG Companies, but also as Communication Officer the French energy transition agency in Ademe. She then gained almost 25 years of experience in Brussels, for the detergent industry association, leading sustainability & communications. Passionate about sustainable progress, energy transition, circular economy and stakeholders engagement, she is Managing Director of Solar Heat Europe which she joined April 2023.

With experience in prototyping, electronics and having completed a BSc of Earth, Energy, and Sustainability at Leiden University, Ian joined the Biosphere Solar team in September 2023. As an all rounder in environmental sustainability, He is now focusing on testing and certification, end of life (EoL) planning and project management.

Eline Fleur Speklé is a policy officer for the energy transition at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. She has a legal background, with a Master's degree from Edinburgh University in Global Environment and Climate Change Law. In her current position, she focuses on the SDE++ subsidy for solar and wind energy, as well as improving the link between the energy transition and the transition towards a circular economy. She is passionate about pursuing a just and sustainable energy transition and incorporates this in her work.

Bio coming soon...

Edwin founded Solarplaza company in 2004. He is a senior PV expert and started in the photovoltaic solar energy business in 1994. He has experience as a solar energy consultant and project developer in more than 200 PV projects. Edwin holds a Master’s degree in Chemical engineering and previously worked in the Chemical industry before starting his first consultancy company in PV in 1994.