Episode 133 | Recycled Renewables | Veolia
Wind power has the potential to deliver gigawatts of power to the grid. My visit to Dominion Energy’s future offshore facility in Virginia still makes me smile.
However, wind blades don’t spin forever. The average lifespan for a typical blade is 30 years. As more blades exceed the length of football fields, there needs to be a sustainable way to recycle them. Viral images of a landfill in Montana betray wind power’s initial promise—that of a sustainable, green, renewable energy source.
Veolia, the world’s largest environmental services company, has signed an agreement with GE Renewable Energy to recycle their old turbine blades. The process would shred the blades—made mostly of fiberglass—into a fuel source and feedstock for cement plants. Coal is currently often used for cement production, again, as both fuel and feedstock. By burning wind blade composite instead of coal, Veolia says this will reduce cement production CO2 emissions by 27%.
Chris Howell, senior director of recycling operations at Veolia, says their solution had to be green and large enough to handle the volumes of wind blades coming to them. He says many of the blades coming to them are not end-of-life age, but as young as 8-12 years. This is a result of many wind repowering projects, as we discussed in Episode 110. As time progresses, Veolia expects most of their feedstock to be blades that have worn out.
Chris says they expect to develop additional solutions for these blades, especially as the materials for them evolve.
“I tell people, these [blades] are like chicken wings,” he says. “All chicken wings are kinda the same but everyone’s got different recipes.”
In addition to blades, Veolia also expects to ramp up recycling of PV solar cells and batteries used in energy storage.
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