FT Rethink
From landfill to a new life: dealing with wind turbine graveyards
There are two graveyards in the town of Sweetwater1 in Texas. In one are rows of gravestones. In the other is an altogether different site – thousands of enormous wind turbine blades laid flat across a vast field. It is not a unique image. In the Casper Regional Landfill in Wyoming2, row after row of blades that once turned with the wind are now covered in soil by tractors.
These so-called wind turbine graveyards offer a view of another side of renewable energy generation that the public does not often get to see. Now the question being asked is what to do with the equipment that we use to make sustainable energy when it needs to be recycled itself.
The issue is a growing problem within the wind industry. While 85% of turbines can be recycled efficiently, the blades pose a problem due to the materials used to make them. Thousands of wind turbines are now approaching the end of their 20-year lifetime, with more than 6,500 blades to be removed each year in Europe until 2025 and about 1,400 in the US over the same period. So the race is on to find solutions.
The winds of change
Heavy storms in the UK in early 2022 were a boon to wind generation across the country. The 100 miles-an-hour speeds generated an all-time high of more than 19,500 megawatts of wind power – over half the UK's electricity.
This record has since been exceeded, with wind power providing 69% of the UK’s electricity at one point in November 2023.3 This shows how far wind generation has developed and the difference that it can make to the sustainable supply of power. Renewable power as a whole continues to go from strength to strength, with a near 50% rise in new capacity in 2023 pushing growth to its fastest pace in 20 years.4 This means renewables now represent almost a third of global electricity production,5 with wind turbines and solar panels making up nearly all of this growth.6 The sector is expected to exceed hydropower, coal and nuclear as sources of electricity generation by 2026.7
But now that wind energy has been in place for some time and turbines have become a regular feature of the land and seascape, swaths of the equipment are reaching the end of their lifespans. Which creates a problem.
Read also: Storage technologies: paving the way for a renewable energy future
Will wind turbine graveyards keep growing?
After their decades of service, turbines must be replaced. And while 85% of them can be recycled as they are made of steel and copper, amongst other materials, there is a problem with plastic polymer blades which can be very difficult to break down.
As a result they end up in landfills such as those in Wyoming and Texas – and the problem is expected to worsen. Because these blades are robust structures built to sustain harsh weather conditions, finding a solution for how to dispose of them has become an ongoing concern for the industry. In Europe, they have been burned to create cement and power, but the energy content is low and the effect increases pollution in the air.
Investors that are eager to pursue a strategy which embraces circularity and sustainability may look on the vast graveyards for forgotten blades and consider how this sits with their worldview
Read also: Cracking the plastic crisis?
Hunting for a solution
Investors that are eager to pursue a strategy that embraces circularity and sustainability may look on the vast wind turbine graveyards and consider how this sits with their worldview.
While the scale of the problem may mean that these blade burial grounds are a long way from being a thing of the past, there are significant efforts being made to bring the 85% recyclability up to 100%.
In Denmark, where wind energy makes up half of the country's needs, Siemens Gamesa has produced the first recyclable blades ready for commercial use offshore. The blades are made from materials cast together with resin, which can be separated from the other components at the end of the working life of the blade.
Also in Denmark, a coalition of scientists has formed CETEC (Circular Economy for Thermosets Epoxy Composites), which aims to produce solutions to make the blades fully recyclable and commercially viable.
Meanwhile in Norway, wind farm builders Akers Offshore Wind and Strathclyde University have come up with a way to extract fibreglass from used turbine blades for reuse.
There are also novel uses for the blades. Staff from the Munster Technological University in Ireland have used the structures to build a new pedestrian bridge. And in the United States, scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology used a section of a blade as the roof of a house.
Recycling renewables
It is an unfortunate reality that blades will continue to be sent to landfill for some time, as the number that are being decommissioned is at such a high level. But while the passing of these wind turbine graveyards is not yet on the horizon, solutions can be spotted in the distance.
1 https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2021/1112/1259429-texas-wind-farm/
2 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills
3 New wind energy record set as turbines generate 21.8 gigawatts of electricity - RenewableUK
4 Executive summary – Renewables 2023 – Analysis - IEA
5 Renewables - Energy System - IEA
6 Executive summary – Renewables 2023 – Analysis - IEA
7 Renewables - Energy System - IEA
Important information
This document is issued by Bank Lombard Odier & Co Ltd or an entity of the Group (hereinafter “Lombard Odier”). It is not intended for distribution, publication, or use in any jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or use would be unlawful, nor is it aimed at any person or entity to whom it would be unlawful to address such a document. This document was not prepared by the Financial Research Department of Lombard Odier.
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