The circular economy value chains for decommissioned wind turbine blades

Today, the turbines of the wind industry’s early days are reaching their end of life. Some are life extended while others will be decommissioned during the next years. The magnitude of the recycling challenge is only beginning to surface. According to WindEurope, in Europe, decommissioned blade material will rise to 350.000 tones in total by 2030 – up from less than 100.000 tones today (Wind Europe, Accelerating Wind Turbine Blade Circularity, 2020). As you can see in the charts below, the blades are distributed across Europe, however Germany, Denmark and Spain in particular will experience the largest volumes of blade material in the short term. The wind energy industry is committed to finding a sustainable way to dispose of these decommissioned wind turbines with respect to the environment, health and safety of workers, energy consumption and cost, and we don’t have recycling process solutions yet.