2 March 2021 15:26 GMT Updated 2 March 2021 15:27 GMT
It’s well-known within the wind power industry that as much as 90% of a turbine can be recycled. Less fully understood is that to achieve the much-sought after “100% recycling” milestone, we still need to find a sustainable after-life solution for the blades.
Blades are, in fact, 100% recyclable. There are already mature technologies that use blades as feedstock in cement co-processing, for instance, and the ‘granulates’ of recovered fibreglass and other materials put through mechanical grinding can be used for a range of new products.
However, being fully recyclable in theory doesn’t really matter, if the blades are not recycled in practice. And it is clear that the lack of large-scale, cost efficient recycling value chains for blades – which are made of polymer-rich composite materials – remains a significant hurdle.