The World's Largest Wind Energy Manufacturer Will Recover and Reuse All Turbine Blades from Its Global Portfolio of Onshore and Offshore Wind Farms After Decommissioning

The World’s Largest Wind Energy Manufacturer Will Recover and Reuse All Turbine Blades from Its Global Portfolio of Onshore and Offshore Wind Farms After Decommissioning

Written by Flavia Marinho

Published on 08/06/2021 at 08:36

Fábrica de pás para turbinas eólicas / Fonte: reprodução Google

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Wind Energy: The World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Developer Commits to Recycling Large Wind Turbine Blades

Orsted, the world’s largest offshore wind farm developer, said last Thursday, June 3, that it has a clear responsibility to the environment and will recover, reuse, or recycle all turbine blades from its global portfolio of wind farms as soon as they are decommissioned.

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The question of what to do with wind turbine blades when they are no longer needed is a headache for the industry. This is because the composite materials of the blades are difficult to recycle, and Orsted noted that most blades, once decommissioned, end up in landfills.

As governments around the world strive to increase their renewable energy capacity, the number of wind turbines will certainly increase.

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Recycling Wind Turbine Blades: An Increasingly Important Issue

The fate of turbine blades, once decommissioned, has become a significant challenge for the industry. Several large companies involved in the sector have been trying to find solutions to the problem in recent years.

For example, in January 2020, wind energy giant Vestas stated that its goal was to produce “zero waste” wind turbines by 2040.

For its part, GE Renewable Energy and Veolia North America signed a multi-year agreement last December to recycle blades extracted from onshore wind turbines in the United States.

More recently, it was announced that a collaboration between academia and industry would focus on recycling fiberglass products, a move that could eventually help reduce the waste produced by wind turbine blades.

Wind farm owners also want to have a plan for what to do with their products when they reach the end of their useful life.

Orsted, Vestas, LM Wind Power, and GE Renewable Energy are part of the DecomBlades consortium, an initiative focused on recycling blades.

Big Business

When a wind blade ends up in a landfill or is incinerated, it is a waste of resources, and opportunities are also being lost. There is a large market to solve the end-of-life challenge for wind turbine blades, and the market will be significantly larger in the coming years.

Currently, only a small portion of the world’s composites are recycled, which is particularly true in the wind turbine industry.

There are factories that deal with the recycling of composite materials, but many more are needed to handle today’s quantities and what we will see in the future.

This would solve the current dilemma regarding the recycling of wind turbine blades, but it would also address much larger challenges for other industries and has the potential to become a big business.

Industrialized decommissioning, in which we can consider all aspects, is a business with enormous potential, but it requires collaboration and the willingness of the entire sector.

The World’s Largest Wind Energy Manufacturer Will Recover and Reuse All Turbine Blades from Its Global Portfolio of Onshore and Offshore Wind Farms After Decommissioning

Wind Energy: The World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Developer Commits to Recycling Large Wind Turbine Blades

Read Also

Recycling Wind Turbine Blades: An Increasingly Important Issue

Big Business

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The World’s Largest Wind Energy Manufacturer Will Recover and Reuse All Turbine Blades from Its Global Portfolio of Onshore and Offshore Wind Farms After Decommissioning

Wind Energy: The World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Developer Commits to Recycling Large Wind Turbine Blades

Read Also

Recycling Wind Turbine Blades: An Increasingly Important Issue

Big Business

Seen from space, an image taken by an astronaut shows an unlikely oasis in the Saudi Arabian desert, protected by a terrain that slows the advance of sand, surrounded by green circles, remnants of an extinct lake and nearly 10,000 years of preserved history.

While the U.S. still faces limitations in deep space, China is developing unprecedented technology with strategic satellites that maintain communication with the far side of the Moon and aims for dominance by 2030.

In Botswana, a salt flat of up to 16,000 km² that was once an African megalake spends months as an absolute white desert, but during the rainy season it transforms into a shallow sea that reappears from nowhere and can be seen from space in the middle of southern Africa.

The Blood Falls of Antarctica hide a living ecosystem trapped under the ice for over 2 million years, where microbes survive without light, without oxygen, and without ever having seen the Sun.

Bavarian archaeologists unearthed a medieval skeleton that had an articulated iron hand in place of its left arm, and the discovery reveals that doctors were already creating sophisticated prosthetics over 500 years ago.

The CEO of Honor in Spain says that smartphones will change with AI, foldables, and even robot phones; the component crisis is making cheap models more expensive in 2026 and shifting the focus to premium.

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