Posted on 10/26/2020 8:03:05 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
In an epic case of poor foresight, the “clean, green” wind industry forgot to come up with a plan for what to do with wind turbine blades after they stop working.
Like all things, they get old and stop functioning properly after a while, but the plastic used to make them lasts virtually “forever.”
The industry has found ways to recycle the steel used to build the towers, but not the fiberglass (a type of plastic) used to build the blades of the high-tech windmills.
Now that the first generation of wind turbines has reached the end of their “lives,” tens of thousands of blades the size of Boeing 747 wings are coming down for burial in giant graveyards we call landfills (12,000 a year in the U.S. and Europe alone).
And that’s just a fraction of what’s to come. These dying turbines were built over a decade ago, “when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now,” Bloomberg reports.
That means there will be more than 5 times as many (hundreds of thousands) being retired over the next decade.
Because they are “built to withstand hurricane-force winds, the blades can’t easily be crushed, recycled or repurposed,” Bloomberg notes.
“That’s created an urgent search for alternatives in places that lack wide-open prairies.”
There are only a handful of landfills that accept them in the U.S. in Iowa and South Dakota.
After being cut into three pieces so they can fit on a truck, they are transported thousands of miles to these junk cemeteries and buried in stacks 30-feet deep.
“The wind turbine blade will be there, ultimately, forever,” Bob Cappadona of Veolia Environnement SA told Bloomberg. “Most landfills are considered a dry tomb.”
A Texas startup called Global Fiberglass Solutions has developed a method to break down blades and press them into pellets and fiber boards to be used for flooring and walls.
“We can process 99.9% of a blade and handle about 6,000 to 7,000 blades a year per plant,” said Chief Executive Officer Don Lilly. “When we start to sell to more builders, we can take in a lot more of them. We’re just gearing up.”
Until demand for the company’s product increases, the blades will continue to make the long haul to the landfills in cities that are paid up to $675,000 to store them indefinitely.
Yeah. We subsidize the use of them so why not? No doubt China Joe would be okay with it. It’s green after all. Maybe make Hunter the blade czar.
If you ever here environmentalists say that “wind power is now cost-competitive with gas, coal or nuclear” - just remember they are very likely not including costs to build back up supply when the wind doesn’t blow, costs in later years when efficiency drops (by about 3-4% per year for windmills), costs of decommissioning and removal, and of course, costs of disposal.
I was referring to the manufacturing process.
The disposal issues aside; I wonder why these components have such a short life-cycle. I would expect they should last 5 decades or more. Seems like there is more to this.
Burn the damn things after chopping them up. Fiberglass burns quite easily. Burn them in a closed environment and use scrubbers to take care of the NO and do not worry about the CO2 which is plant food.
They should be repurposed into suppositories for politicians.
Guess he means high-paying jobs in the landfill industry.
When I was training new managers one of the things I pounded into their heads was to continually ask the question: “Then what.”
In this case it would have been, “What is the life of one of these things”
“The life is about 20 years for the fiberglass blades.”
“THEN WHAT HAPPENS?”
People don’t go too far down these roads, and then it bites them in the ass.
Think about Joe Biden’s massive “Covid testing” where everyone can get tested immediately, for free.
Then what happens?
Think about what happens when these tests are all over the place. What do you do with that information?
The path that takes us down can be kind of scary.
Send them to Joe and Kamala, COD of course.
Grind them up and burn them. Lots of BTU value.
How does a plastic blade ‘wear out’
Fill the Blades with Rebar and Concrete then use them to construct the Border Wall.
They won’t understand the purpose. They will therefore declare that they were used in religious ceremonies. It’s what archaeologists do whenever they are stumped.
Shred/grind them up and add them to concrete used in construction
So green, So energy efficient. As any Eagle or Bat on the forest floor.
Dessert topping!!
Or, Why not make Tesla Charging Stations out of them, no...wait..
Can’t remember where I saw it.
Someone posted a list of how much oil wind turbines use. Wish I could find it again.
Anybody got any idea where I might look?
I was thinking they could somehow be used to make tiny houses for the homeless. Better yet, teach some of the homeless how to make the tiny houses with the blades.
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