OnePlanet Solar Recycling – an advanced materials recovery processor specializing in end-of-life solar panels – announced the closing of a $7 million seed financing round to advance development of its $90 million industrial-scale ‘River City’ Project, a first-of-its-kind solar panel recycling facility located in Green Cove Springs, Florida.
This initial phase of funding will support final engineering, permitting, and pre-construction activities for the facility, which is designed to process 2+ million end-of-life photovoltaic (PV) modules annually upon commissioning in 2027, with planned expansions for additional phases totaling 6 million modules by 2030. The facility is expected to be one of the most extensively dedicated solar recycling operations in North America. It represents a strategic response to the accelerating wave of solar decommissioning anticipated over the coming decades.
The funding round was led by Khasma Capital, an investment fund focused on the circular economy and emerging energy transition assets. And 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’s River City project was also 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. This 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.
Before founding OnePlanet, CEO André Pujadas had senior roles at the largest steel producers in the world, including Nucor Corporation and Severstal, and was directly involved in the industrial and technological shift that not only revolutionized global crude steel production but also transformed scrap metal from a low-value end-of-life product into a highly sought ferrous commodity.
At the center of the massive sustainable steel market was the deployment of Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) technology. Andduring his time 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.
The River City project is being developed as a scalable and platform-level operating asset for a national network of facilities, supporting the buildout of a domestic closed-loop solar economy. And the plant’s proprietary 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.
OnePlanet’s 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 experience positions OnePlanet at the nexus of metals manufacturing, advanced materials recovery at industrial scale, and renewable energy asset management.
The team was recently enhanced 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.
KEY QUOTES:
“OnePlanet has assembled a team with both deep technical expertise and a disciplined approach to infrastructure project execution. 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.”
Ashlynn Horras, Partner at Khasma Capital
“The River City Project is purpose-built infrastructure for a new era of clean energy maturity. 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.”
“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. 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.”
André Pujadas, Chief Executive Officer of OnePlanet
