{"id":5727,"date":"2021-09-13T06:57:48","date_gmt":"2021-09-13T06:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=5727"},"modified":"2021-09-13T06:57:48","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T06:57:48","slug":"surging-wind-industry-faces-its-own-green-dilemma-landfills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=5727","title":{"rendered":"Surging wind industry faces its own green dilemma: landfills"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Siemens launches first recyclable wind turbine blade
\n\u2022 Anti-wind groups use dumping of blades as rallying issue
\n\u2022 Industry calls for EU landfill ban<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wind turbines have become a vital source of global green energy but their makers increasingly face an environmental conundrum of their own: how to recycle them.
\nThe European Union\u2019s share of electricity from wind power has grown from less than 1% in 2000, when the continent began to curb planet-heating fossil fuels, to more than 16% today.
\nAs the first wave of windmills reach the end of their lives, tens of thousands of blades are being stacked and buried in landfill sites where they will take centuries to decompose.
\nSpanish turbine maker Siemens Gamesa this week launched what it called a \u201cgame changer\u201d \u2014 the first recyclable blades, which use a technology that allows their carbon and glass fibres to be reused in products like screen monitors or car parts.
\n\u201cWe have reached a major milestone in a society that puts care for the environment at its heart,\u201d said Andreas Nauen, chief executive of Siemens Gamesa, which expects the blades to become the industry standard.
\nEurope is the world\u2019s second largest producer of wind-generated electricity, making up about 30% of the global capacity, compared to China\u2019s 39%, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, an industry trade association.
\nWind Europe, a Brussels-based trade association which promotes the use of wind power in Europe, expects 52,000 blades a year to need disposal by 2030, up from about 1,000 today.
\n\u201cThe public want to be reassured that wind energy is fully sustainable and fully circular,\u201d said WindEurope\u2019s chief executive, Giles Dickson, describing Siemens Gamesa\u2019s new recyclable blade as a \u201csignificant breakthrough\u201d.
\nWhile wind turbine blades are not especially toxic, the resulting landfill, if improperly handled, may contribute to dangerous environmental impacts, including the pollution of land and waterways.
\nAll forms of energy have some environmental cost but renewables, almost by definition, cause less damage to the planet, said Martin Gerhardt, Siemens Gamesa\u2019s offshore wind chief.
\n\u201cIf you look at oil wells and the spills or if you consider methane leaks, compared to the fossil industries, wind is the lesser problem,\u201d he said.
\nWind power is one of the cleanest forms of energy, with a carbon footprint 99% lower than coal and 75% less than solar, according to a study by Bernstein Research, a US-based research and brokerage firm.
\nIts emissions come mainly from the production of iron and steel used in turbines and concrete for windmill foundations.
\nIf these were mitigated by techniques such as carbon capture and storage \u2014 where carbon dioxide is buried underground \u2014 \u201cyou\u2019d be able to cut out the carbon footprint completely,\u201d said Deepa Venkateswaran, the study\u2019s author.
\nThe growing mountains of waste created by old blades has become a rallying point for groups opposed to wind turbines, which they also say are noisy and spoil the countryside.
\nBut landfill is likely to remain the preferred disposal option because it is the cheapest, said Eric Waeyenbergh, advocacy manager at Geocycle, a sustainable waste management firm.
\n\u201cIf you just throw it in the landfill, this is the cheapest price you can have when you\u2019re dismantling the windmill. And that\u2019s a problem because there\u2019s no mandatory recycling or recovery obligation,\u201d he said.
\nGeocycle and WindEurope are lobbying for landfills to be banned across Europe where only four countries \u2014 Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland \u2014 have outlawed the landfilling of composite materials, such as wind turbine blades.
\nGeocycle co-runs a cement kiln in Germany, with building industry giant Lafarge, which is partly fuelled by burning thousands of tonnes of old wind turbines, which create less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels.
\nRecyclable blades can also be ground up for use in products such as rearview car mirrors and insulation panels, or heat-treated to create materials for roof light panels and gutters.
\nHowever, industry groups say these techniques are not currently available at commercial scale or at a price that would make them viable alternatives to landfill.
\nDavid Romero Vindel, co-founder of Reciclalia, which cuts and shreds turbine blades for recycling as carbon fibre yarn and fabric, said a landfill ban would help his firm.
\n\u201cWe need the EU to push the sector in this direction of recycling,\u201d he said.
\nVivian Loonela, a spokeswoman for the European Commission said it will review its landfill policies in 2024.
\n\u201cThe recycling of (windmill) composite fraction remains a challenge due to the low value of the recycled product and the relatively small amount of waste (produced), which does not stimulate the recycling markets,\u201d she said.
\n\u2013 Thomson Reuters Foundation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Siemens launches first recyclable wind turbine blade \u2022 Anti-wind groups use dumping of blades as rallying issue \u2022 Industry calls for EU landfill ban Wind turbines have become a vital source of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5728,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,9,27],"tags":[46,48,57,63,68,76,77,82,86,87,90,96,99,103,107,109,111,113,137,139,146,148,160,174,183,184,201,202,209,222,230,232,233,244,246,249,256,262,263,267,277,279,280,285,288],"class_list":["post-5727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blue-economy","category-clean-energy","category-climate","category-roudi-baroudi","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-blue-economy","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-cyprus","tag-decarbonising","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-eastmed","tag-egypt","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-peace","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-pollution","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-unclos","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}