Former steel exec eyes solar panel recycling as next big opportunity
Solar panel recycling in the United States is an opportunity attracting a growing number of executives and investors. The newest entrant in the space, OnePlanet Solar Recycling, just closed a $7 million seed funding round, and is being led by former steel executive André Pujadas.
“OnePlanet is building the infrastructure to harness this untapped materials stream as a foundational input not only for clean energy manufacturing, but also for the U.S. semiconductor industry—supporting domestic chip production and fortifying critical supply chains for decades to come,” Pujadas says.
This initial capital will support final engineering, permitting, and pre-construction activities for the facility. The end goal is a $90M industrial-scale ‘River City’ Project located in Green Cove Springs, Florida. At commissioning (projected for 2027), the facility will process over 2 million end-of-life PV modules annually. Planned expansions would bump that to 6 million modules by 2030.
OnePlanet background
Before founding OnePlanet, CEO Pujadas held senior roles at the largest steel producers in the world including Nucor Corporation and Severstal. He was directly involved in the technological shift that transformed scrap metal into a highly sought ferrous commodity.
That revolution rested on the deployment of Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) technology. During his tenure at Nucor, Pujadas was directly involved in advancing and implementing EAF-based operations. That not only revolutionized domestic steelmaking, but also redefined how the U.S. approached industrial recycling at scale. Today, Pujadas sees the solar industry at a similar inflection point.
“With millions of panels slated for decommissioning, the opportunity to recover high-purity silicon—and reintroduce it as a captive, domestic feedstock—parallels the EAF-era transformation we pioneered at Nucor,” said Pujadas.
What ‘separates’ OnePlanet
OnePlanet’s differentiator is a proprietary workflow and solar panel assessment system that does a lot of work before panels get broken down. From there, OnePlanet can glass, plastic, and silicon and up to 97% of metal concentrates of aluminum.
The OnePlanet founding team brings deep institutional expertise spanning global finance, heavy industry, and clean energy infrastructure, with alumni from industry leaders such as Nucor, Goldman Sachs, Commercial Metals Company, and PineGate Renewables. This breadth of experience positions OnePlanet at the nexus of metals manufacturing, advanced materials recovery at industrial scale, and renewable energy asset management. The team was recently strengthened by two key hires—one with a background in advanced chemical production processes at 3M, Koch Industries, and Dow Chemical, and another with utility-scale sales experience at leading renewable energy OEMs including Trina Solar, Array Technologies, and Power Electronics.
River City Project investment
The River City project is being developed as a scalable, platform-level operating asset for a national network of facilities, supporting the buildout of a domestic closed-loop solar economy. The plant’s proprietary state-of-the-art fully automated separation and recovery technologies are optimized for throughput, and recovery of high purity streams strategically positioning OnePlanet as a foundational player in the future of energy-critical minerals recovery in the U.S.
The financing round was led by Khasma Capital, an investment fund focused on the circular economy and emerging energy transition assets. Khasma’s investment reflects growing institutional recognition that solar recycling is not a strictly downstream issue, but a critical upstream opportunity essential to sustaining U.S. clean energy buildout at scale.
“OnePlanet has assembled a team with both deep technical expertise and a disciplined approach to infrastructure project execution,” said Ashlynn Horras, Partner at Khasma Capital. “This investment reflects our belief that solar module recycling is not only necessary – it is investable at scale, with durable tailwinds driven by regulation, economics, and resource security.”
In parallel with the equity raise, OnePlanet’s River City project was awarded a $14.5 million Investment Tax Credit under the Department of Energy’s competitive Section 48C(e) Advanced Energy Project Program, established by the Inflation Reduction Act. The tax credit specifically supports domestic advanced manufacturing facilities that recover and reintroduce critical materials—such as silicon, aluminum, and copper—back into U.S. supply chains.
“The River City Project is purpose-built infrastructure for a new era of clean energy maturity,” said André Pujadas, Chief Executive Officer of OnePlanet. “Solar as an industry is now at an inflection point in its lifecycle, where we can’t simply install megawatts—we must also build the industrial capacity to recover and reintegrate the very materials that enable it. This facility will be a cornerstone of that effort.”
