Wind power’s unsolved problem
Wind farms are key to the green energy transition. But there’s a catch — the blades are hard to recycle and usually end up in landfills. So what’s the solution?
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00:00 Look at this bus stop, this bridge and this playground.
00:05 Notice anything? Let's take another look.
00:08 They're all made of wind turbine blades.
00:11 Because it looks cool, yeah, but also because we don't really know what else to do with them once they're worn out.
00:17 We can recycle up to 90% of a turbine, like the steel from the tower or the copper from all the wires,
00:25 but the gigantic blades mostly get dumped into landfills.
00:29 A field day for opponents of wind energy.
00:32 The big wind turbine junkyard.
00:34 They're just lying around.
00:36 There's nothing much renewable about these things.
00:39 But the wind industry won't let that stand.
00:42 They're working on making wind turbine blades recyclable and saving their green image.
00:47 Wind turbine blades are mainly made of glass or carbon fibers and stuff called epoxy resin.
00:52 This acts like a plastic superglue that binds them together.
00:55 You end up with a very strong and resilient material.
00:59 Dumping them into landfills and forgetting about them is a massive waste of materials.
01:03 So, let's look at some ideas on how to stop it.
01:06 One way to deal with old blades is by using brute force.
01:17 We can burn off the plastic part or use strong chemicals to dissolve it.
01:22 The remains is the fiber that can be used to make new things like cars, planes or snowboards.
01:28 But these processes aren't perfect.
01:31 All of these take a lot of energy.
01:34 And the products that you get, because they're degraded by the very fierce technology that you've been using,
01:43 by the brutal methods that you've been using to separate the components,
01:48 they're not as strong, not as useful as they were.
01:51 So, you don't get so much value from them.
01:54 Any recycling process has to be economically viable and this erodes that.
02:00 Recently, a different approach has become popular.
02:03 Turns out the materials in turbine blades are pretty good for making something else.
02:07 If they are cut into pieces and then shredded, they can be used in cement production.
02:12 You get some energy from the plastic part of the blade, the resin.
02:16 As that is heated, it gives off energy.
02:21 And then you're left with this charred glass remains and that goes into concrete.
02:28 And so you're able to recover some of the materials and use them for common material.
02:34 And then you're also able to recover some energy.
02:36 Waste management firm Veolia has partnered with General Electric to do exactly that on a large scale in the US.
02:43 They say they've already recycled over 3,000 blades this way.
02:46 And that's not the only benefit.
02:48 By burning shredded wind turbine blades instead of coal,
02:51 cement makers could save up to 27% of CO2 emissions, according to an analysis by a consulting firm.
02:57 If you have a cement industry which is located close enough to the place that you've got your wind turbine blades,
03:06 then this is actually something which is viable.
03:09 It's economically advantageous and it's environmentally favorable as well.
03:15 And certainly better than the landfill.
03:18 But wouldn't it be better still if we could use old turbine blades to make new ones?
03:22 We really need to ensure that we get into circularity and get into more sustainable life cycle designs.
03:35 This is Maximilian Schnippering, who leads the sustainability department at Siemens Gamesa,
03:40 one of the world's largest wind turbine manufacturers.
03:43 They develop what they call the recyclable blades,
03:45 which you might have guessed is a blade that's supposed to be easily recyclable.
03:49 That's down to a new type of resin they've invented.
03:52 This resin can be dissolved easily in the mild acid solution at the end of the life.
03:59 And then this solution separates basically the resins from the glass fiber and the other core materials
04:05 so that we can recover the separated materials again and use them for new products.
04:11 For the moment, these new products are things like suitcases, PC cases or cars, not new blades.
04:17 The plan is to ultimately close the loop, but more research is still needed.
04:21 The recyclable blades are more expensive than traditional ones.
04:25 How much exactly, Siemens Gamesa wouldn't say, but they're already being used in some wind projects.
04:30 Unfortunately, Siemens Gamesa also wouldn't say how high the share of total sales is.
04:35 Yeah, that's something we cannot disclose.
04:37 Which is a shame, because obviously the more of them we use now,
04:40 the more of a dent in blade waste this solution could make down the line.
04:44 What's clear is that it doesn't help with traditional blades we have to deal with now.
04:50 [Sounds of blades being taken down]
04:55 You will not see the impact of that until 25 or 30 years when those blades are being taken down.
05:02 This is Lisa Ekstrand, who is head of sustainability at Vestas, another leading wind turbine manufacturer.
05:08 They are taking a different approach in their recycling strategy.
05:12 As soon as we have scaled up our solution, we can already start recycling epoxy-infused blades
05:17 that were put up many years ago and that will be taken down now, as well as future blades.
05:22 They say they figured out a way to separate the materials in existing turbine blades
05:26 and make them reusable, including the epoxy resin.
05:29 It's supposedly done with a chemical solution that breaks it down.
05:33 Vestas doesn't let on much about their new process, just that so far it's only been proven in the lab.
05:40 They'll now be testing it in the real world for two years to see if it can be scaled up.
05:44 What we do know is that the chemical solution is nothing exotic.
05:49 It's chemicals that you will find off the shelf.
05:53 And that of course gives us very good indications that this has a lot of opportunities to be very cost competitive.
06:00 So let's recap. There's a bunch of ideas out there on how to tackle blade waste.
06:06 Some that already work at scale and some that still have to prove they do.
06:10 Wind power companies across the board are throwing money at this.
06:14 And while researching this story, I've repeatedly wondered, why?
06:18 If you ask them, they'll say something like this.
06:21 Sustainability is at the core of our business.
06:23 It is also very much part of our DNA.
06:26 Which somehow only felt like half the answer.
06:29 I mean, don't get me wrong, throwing things in the dump and forgetting about all the materials that went into making them
06:35 should not be the way forward.
06:37 But with old blades, it looks and feels a lot worse than it is.
06:41 I mean, these things are literally built to not decompose.
06:44 It should be pretty stable. They will just stay there basically forever.
06:50 So the main problem with landfilling is really that blades take up a lot of space.
06:54 There will be 43 million tons of discarded blades by 2050.
06:59 Well, there will be 12 billion tons of plastic waste in landfills and the environment by then.
07:04 If we drown in waste, it's very likely not going to be down to wind turbine blades.
07:08 But that's not the point.
07:10 Compared with plastic waste, it's tiny.
07:13 Compared with lots of other bits of waste, it's tiny.
07:16 But it's really important in the public eye.
07:20 It's sort of iconic.
07:22 So we've got these huge wind turbines which are making green electricity for us.
07:27 And people say, yes, but at the end of life, you've got parts of this structure
07:33 which are going to landfill.
07:35 That is not green.
07:37 So it's partly really to improve the image of wind turbine technology in the public domain.
07:49 For the wind industry, solving the recycling challenge is the best way to live up to their image
07:55 and future-proof their business.
07:57 [MUSIC PLAYING]