In the European Union, which strictly regulates material that can go into landfills, some blades are burned in kilns that create cement or in power plants. What materials are used to make wind turbines? The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to end. In an announcement, the wind turbine manufacturer explained its goal would mean operating a value chain that produced no waste materials. Incredible photos have revealed the final resting place of massive wind turbine blades that cannot be recycled, and are instead heaped up in piles in landfills. That’s created an urgent search for alternatives in places that lack wide-open prairies. There’s a lot of interest in this.”. The Invenergy Judith Gap wind farm in central Montana, uses 90 wind turbines from GE. With this week's announcement, GE Renewable Energy becomes the latest major company connected to the wind energy sector to attempt to reduce its environmental footprint. “The wind turbine blade will be there, ultimately, forever,” said Bob Cappadona, chief operating officer for the North American unit of Paris-based Veolia Environnement SA, which is searching for better ways to deal with the massive waste. The first models were expensive and inefficient, spinning fast and low. While 2050 is some way off, there are challenges in the here and now too, which makes the case for recycling all the more pressing. First, you need to saw through the lissome fiberglass using a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer. Not so green energy: Hundreds of non-recyclable fiberglass wind turbine blades are pictured piling up in landfill. The Invenergy Judith Gap wind farm in central Montana, uses 90 wind turbines from GE. Wind power is carbon-free and about 85% of turbine components, including steel, copper wire, electronics and gearing can be recycled or reused. The wind turbine blades are a toxic amalgam of unique composites, fiberglass, epoxy, polyvinyl chloride foam, polyethylene terephthalate foam, balsa wood, and polyurethane coatings. We’re just gearing up.”. The boom-bust oil town was founded at the turn of the 19th century. Down the road, the sprawling landfill bustles and a dozen wind turbines spin gently on the horizon. Got a confidential news tip? We've reached a 'turning point' on the electrification of vehicles, Nissan executive says, Italy's Eni to buy 20% stake in world's largest offshore wind farm, UK announces 'ambitious' plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 68%. Referencing analysis carried out by Quantis U.S., GE Renewable Energy said blade recycling would allow for a "27% net reduction in CO2 emissions from cement production." There’s little time to waste. Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services. Companies are searching for ways to deal with the tens of thousands of blades that have reached the end of their lives. Sign up for free newsletters and get more CNBC delivered to your inbox. The electricity comes from turbines that spin generators. Modern models emerged after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, when shortages compelled western governments to find alternatives to fossil fuels. Industry body WindEurope has said 14,000 wind turbine blades are set to be decommissioned in Europe across the next five years. In a pilot project last year, Veolia tried grinding them to dust, looking for chemicals to extract. "By adding wind turbine blades — which are primarily made of fiberglass — to replace raw materials for cement manufacturing, we are reducing the amount of coal, sand and minerals that are needed to produce the cement," Bob Cappadona, chief operating officer for VNA's Environmental Solutions and Services division, said in a statement issued Tuesday. The issue of what to do with wind turbine blades when they're no longer needed creates a number of challenges. As explained by Scientific American, conventional blades are made by materials layered on top of each other. The wind energy industry represents one of the fastest growing application sectors of composites, where reinforcement fibers, such as fiberglass or carbon fibers, a plastic polymer, such as polyester or epoxy, and a core material are used to build strong and compliant rotor blades . They tower over pumpjacks known as nodding donkeys that pull oil from wells. A trial using a GE blade had been completed last year, he added, while over 100 turbine blades had been processed this fall. “Most landfills are considered a dry tomb.”, “The last thing we want to do is create even more environmental challenges.”. Over the course of 35+ years, MFG has produced more than 20,000 blades. All Rights Reserved. A worker walks past wind turbine blades awaiting transport in Fort Madison, Iowa. Until then, municipal and commercial dumps will take most of the waste, which the American Wind Energy Association in Washington says is safest and cheapest. Thousands of Wind Turbine Blades Wind Up in Landfills. “It’s always best to do a system-level design — treating the rotor, the turbine, and the tower as one system — but the reality is that the energy market is so competitive and everyone is so worried about what their competitors are doing, that they often don’t have time to do a system-level design,” explains Wetzel… Workers are experimenting with methods to fit more blades in their graves. The "multi-year agreement" relates to blades removed from onshore wind turbines in the United States. It pointed to an Electric Power Research Institute study that estimates all blade waste through 2050 would equal roughly .015% of all the municipal solid waste going to landfills in 2015 alone. Indestructible wind turbine blades can’t easily be crushed, recycled or repurposed; Instead they are hacked into pieces small enough for a flatbed and hauled to landfills “Wind turbine blades at the end of their operational life are landfill-safe, unlike the waste from some other energy sources, and represent a small fraction of overall U.S. municipal solid waste,” according to an emailed statement from the group. According to the paper, waste produced by wind turbine blades could hit an estimated 43.4 million metric tons by the year 2050. A Division of NBCUniversal. “The chemical industry plays a decisive role in the transition to a circular economy by investing in the research and development of new materials, which make wind turbine blades more reliable, affordable and recyclable,” says CEFIC Director General, Marco Mensink. “They see these wind turbines as something that’s hurting coal and oil.”. Making a wind turbine blade is quite a labor-intensive process. Stay Connected; Skip to content Skip to content. This happens through the turning of large fiberglass blades, which then spin a generator to produce electricity. Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. “People around here don’t like change,” said Morgan Morsett, a bartender at Frosty’s Bar & Grill. Wind power is carbon-free, and about 85% of turbine components, including steel, copper wire, electronics and gearing, can be recycled or reused. Breaking News. Up a gentle northern slope, a shooting club boasts of cowboy-action pistol ranges. We want to hear from you. The thermoplastic fiberglass pellets are suitable for injection molding and extrusion manufacturing processes, according to a company press release. Read More > Changing the world through the power of wind Each day we work to change the world through the power of wind, creating a cleaner, greener future for everyone on our shared home, earth. The first wind farm in the U.S. was installed in New Hampshire in 1980, and California deployed thousands of turbines east of San Francisco across the Altamont Pass. While acknowledging that burying blades in perpetuity isn’t ideal, Bratvold, the special waste technician, was surprised by some of the negative reactions when a photo of some early deliveries went viral last summer. But the fiberglass blades remain difficult to dispose of. The research looked at waste produced by factors such as the manufacturing process, operation and maintenance as well as the end of a blade's life. With some as long as a football field, big rigs can only carry one at a time, making transportation costs prohibitive for long-distance hauls. A decade later, General Electric Co. made its 1.5 megawatt model—enough to supply 1,200 homes in a stiff breeze—an industry standard. In the U.S., they go to the handful of landfills that accept them, in Lake Mills, Iowa; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Casper, where they will be interred in stacks that reach 30 feet under. Ninety percent of a turbine's parts can be recycled or sold, according to Van Vleet, but the blades, made of a tough but pliable mix of resin and fiberglass … The company is currently scaling up and plans to boost production capacity by the end of this year. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years. Spring is coming, and when it does, the inexorable march of blades will resume. “That’s the end of it for this winter,” said waste technician Michael Bratvold, watching a bulldozer bury them forever in sand. Their steel tubes rose 260 feet and sported swooping fiberglass blades. The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyoming, is the repository of at least 870 discarded blades, and one of the few locations in the country that accepts the massive fiberglass objects. “We came up with some crazy ideas,” Cappadona said. We currently have two dedicated blade factories located in mid-America. “When we start to sell to more builders, we can take in a lot more of them. Landfill manager Cynthia Langston said the blades are much cleaner to store than discarded oil equipment and Casper is happy to take the thousand blades from three in-state wind farms owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s PacifiCorp. Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills. “We want to make it a sustainable business. Wind farms, common in Wyoming, overlook the Casper landfill. "zero-waste" wind turbines by the year 2040. research paper from the University of Cambridge. Turbine blades can be bigger than the wing of a Boeing 747, and many of them end up in landfills once they’re removed from service. Some component parts MFC has the capability of producing components such as nacells, blades, tail veins, blade … FREE . Photographer: Benjamin Rasmussen for Bloomberg Green, Explore dynamic updates of the earth’s key data points. In an announcement Tuesday, GE Renewable Energy said the blades would be shredded at a VNA site in Missouri before being "used as a replacement for coal, sand and clay at cement manufacturing facilities across the U.S." The issue of what to do with wind turbine blades when they're no longer needed has proven to be a headache for the industry. Until large-scale recycling is widely available, landfills must accommodate defunct blades. They’ve tried bunkers, berms and even crushing them with the bulldozer, but the tracks kept slipping off the smooth blades. In Iowa, Waste Management Inc. “worked closely with renewable energy companies to come up with a solution for wind mill blade processing, recycling and disposal,” said Julie Ketchum, a spokeswoman. Wind turbines have increased in size and quantity to meet clean energy capacity demands Modern wind power converts the kinetic (movement) energy from wind into mechanical energy. It plans another operation in Iowa. ©2020 Bloomberg L.P. Europe, which has been dealing with the problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. Built-in product integrity is the quality that earned MFG wind blades a top-rated warranty record. Each blade is cut into pieces for transport and stacked for efficiency. GFS says it’s the first U.S.-based company to commercially recycle fiberglass wind turbine blades. , near the continent ’ s a lot of interest in this. ” four years are to! 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