Introducing new circular lifecycle improvements for the wind industry

Wind turbine blade recycling is a key challenge for our industry. Today, we're pleased to announce two more agreements that signal GE Renewable Energy’s commitment to play a leadership role in addressing the challenge.

Through the first agreement, we're partnering with LafargeHolcim to explore new ways to utilize materials from decommissioned wind turbines: the glass fibres and fillers in the blade composite are recycled and could be used to replace cement raw materials, while the organic remainder is recovered to provide energy for cement manufacturing, leaving no residue. The cement resulting from this process may be used to build concrete foundations and towers for new turbines, continuing the lifecycle circularity of the product. Last year, we worked with LafargeHolcim to demonstrate an innovative solution to 3D-print concrete bases for the next generation of GE’s wind turbines.

Our second agreement is with neowa, whose proprietary process and tools will shred wind turbine blades, including the glass fibres, into pellets of varying sizes to be used as a cement production feedstock.

These announcements are important because, in a maturing industry, wind turbines inevitably reach the end of their operational life and we work with customers to replace them with more efficient models. Nearly 10 GW of aging turbines in Europe will be repowered or decommissioned by 2025. While much of these first-generation turbines can be recycled, until very recently many of the blades have ended up buried in land fill. This is an industry-wide problem, but one that the industry is making progress in addressing.

The European Commission has adopted a new Circular Economy Action Plan - one of the main blocks of the European Green Deal, targeting how products are designed, promoting circular economy processes, encouraging sustainable consumption, and aiming to ensure that waste is prevented and the resources used are kept in the EU economy for as long as possible.

Last year, WindEurope published a paper which stated that “wind turbines already have a recyclability rate of 85% to 90% [and] making turbines 100% recyclable is an important task for the wind industry as the EU heads towards a circular economy”. They go on to say that “turbine blades represent a specific challenge. Wind turbine blades are made up of composite materials that boost the performance of wind energy by allowing lighter and longer blades. Today 2.5 million tonnes of composite material are in use in the wind sector globally.”

One of the world’s leading renewable energy developers and operators, ?rsted, last week committed to “… either reuse, recycle, or recover all of the wind turbine blades in its global portfolio of onshore and offshore wind farms upon decommissioning.”

LM Wind Power, a GE Renewable Energy business, and one of the world’s leading blade manufacturers, has been leading the way in looking at new materials for blades, replacing balsa as a core material with PET (Polyethylene terephthalate), a plastic polymer commonly found in food and drink packaging. They’ve also been working with an industry-wide consortium called DecomBlades in Denmark which brings together the wind industry, the recycling industries and universities to form the basis to commercialize viable recycling solutions.

LM Wind Power have also been part of a project called ZEBRA to design and manufacture fully sustainable wind turbine blades, working with a consortium that represents the full value chain from development of materials, to blade manufacturing, wind turbine operation, and eventually recycling of the decommissioned blade material.

GE Renewable Energy is committed to reducing environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of its products, and the wind industry – customers, manufacturers, and supply chain – are determined to promote sustainable, cleaner power generation as the world moves through the energy transition. GE has made several announcements over the last year as we partner with companies to deal with decommissioned wind turbine components and turn them in to energy and construction materials, including a multi-year agreement with Veolia North America, where the majority of blades that are replaced during repowering efforts in the US will be processed for use as a raw material for cement, utilizing a cement kiln co-processing technology.

These are important steps in the move through the energy transition and providing solutions for our customers demanding reliable, sustainable and affordable green power.