A wind turbine’s blades can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing, so at the end of their lifespan they can’t just be hauled away.
First, you need to saw through the lissome fiberglass using a diamond-encrusted industrial saw to create three pieces small enough to be strapped to a tractor-trailer.
The municipal landfill in Casper, Wyo., is the final resting place of 870 blades whose days making renewable energy have come to an end. The severed fragments look like bleached whale bones nestled against one another.
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Turbine blades can last up to 20 years, but many are taken down after just 10 so they can be replaced with bigger and more powerful designs. Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years. Europe, which has been dealing with the problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF.
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“The wind turbine blade will be there, ultimately, forever,” said Bob Cappadona, chief operating officer of the North American unit of Paris-based Veolia Environnement, which is searching for better ways to deal with the massive waste. “Most landfills are considered a dry tomb.
“The last thing we want to do is create even more environmental challenges.”
