Wind turbines tossed into dump stirs debate on wind power’s dirty downside
By Chris Martin
31 July 2019
(Bloomberg) – Wind turbines may be carbon-free, but they’re not recyclable.
A photograph of dozens of giant turbine blades dumped into a Wyoming landfill touched off a debate Wednesday on Twitter about wind power’s environmental drawbacks. The argument may be only beginning.
Fiberglass turbine blades — which in some cases are as long a football field — aren’t easy to recycle. And with BloombergNEF expecting up to 2 gigawatts worth of turbines to be refitted this year and next, there could be heaps more headed for dumps.
Cynthia Langston, solid waste division manager for the city of Casper, declined to say where the turbine debris came from. But she’s happy to have it. The 1,000 blades will bring in about $675,000 for the landfill, helping keep trash costs low for local residents. Plus, Langston said, wind-farm junk is less toxic than other garbage.
“It’s much cleaner than the contaminated soil and demolition projects from the oil and gas industry,” Langston said in an interview. “These are about as non-toxic as you can get.” [more]
Turbines Tossed Into Dump Stirs Debate on Wind’s Dirty Downside
Wind turbine blades being disposed of in Casper landfill
By Tim Mandese
7 August 2019
(Cowboy State Daily) – The Casper landfill will soon be the home of more than 1,000 decommissioned wind turbine blades and motor housing units.
According to Cindie Langston, solid waste manager for the Casper Regional Landfill, the materials will be deposited in an area of the landfill designed to hold construction and demolition material.
CRL is one of the few landfills with the proper permits and certifications to accept the decommissioned turbine materials. […]
Each turbine blade will need between 30 and 44.8 cubic yards of landfill space, using a total of 448,000 cubic yards of the 2.6 million yards set aside for construction and demolition material. The components are made of a fiberglass material that is one of the most inert, non-toxic materials accepted at CRL, Langston said.
The average lifespan of a wind turbine is 20 to 25 years, and wind farms repurpose and recycle 90 percent of the materials in a wind turbine unit. The only materials not recycled are the fiberglass blades and motor housings. Nationwide, there are nearly 50,000 wind turbines, with 2,700 being decommissioned since the energy boom of the 1970s.
Researchers at Washington State University are looking for ways to reuse the fiberglass components of aged-out turbines, but no practical commercial applications have yet been found. There is some hope that ground up blades can be used to create building materials, among other things. [more]
