End-of-life Options for Composite Material Wind Turbine Blades: Recover, Repurpose or Reuse? — Re-Wind
The technical and commercial success of wind energy has resulted in c. 600 GW of capacity being deployed around the world. Wind turbines have a typical operational lifetime of 20-25 years, therefore a large number of wind turbines will be decommissioned in the coming decades. This will lead to a large volume of composite material waste from end-of-life blades. In this paper, repurposing is proposed as an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable end-of-life option for composite material wind turbine blades. Repurposing is preferable to materials recovery, waste-to-energy or landfilling within the circular economy paradigm, and may offer additional social benefits over these other options. A methodology is proposed to assess the environmental, social and economic sustainability of repurposing solutions for end-of-life wind turbine blades.
Leahy, P.G., 2019, “End-of-life Options for Composite Material Wind Turbine Blades: Recover, Repurpose or Reuse?” 14th SWEDES Conference, Dubrovnik, CROATIA, Oct 1-6, 2019
