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.
Idiot environmentalist whackos only create problems. They can’t solve any.
The liberals believe in only two kinds of power, wind and solar. So why not just install solar panels on these discarded turbine blades? Simple, eh?
J/k
But . . but . . Joe Biden said “green energy” is beautiful and will bring many wonderful high paying jobs. Landfilled turbine blades are not beautiful nor are unused acres of farmland with huge concrete windmill bases that power companies leave behind.
And when future archeologists excavate they will say this is where the idiot tribe lived.
It’s worse than that. they are supposed to last 50 years. They last 20.
Why don’t we just subsidize the companies who bury these things? Add the oversight of a government agency (DOE or BLM spring to mind) and there you have it! Problem solved.
GEORGE CARLIN:
“The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth! The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place: it wanted plastic for itself, didn’t know how to make it, needed us.”
If only one could fashion them into Homeless shelters...
Cut holes in them and bury them upright in the ground so spotted owls can nest in them.
Never could figure out the environmental wackos and wind mills....
I can see sticking them some where no one sees them..
Drive down the Columbia River and look at the Washington side and you see ugly windmills...why not stick them back so you cannot see them..then California there
are a bunch near Palm Desert or somewhere there and are they ugly
> Cut holes in them and bury them upright in the ground so spotted owls can nest in them. <
That’s not a bad idea. But I’m concerned that the semi-buried blades might disturb some species of snail. So I’m going to apply for a large federal grant to study the problem.
(”Price is right” fail sound effect)
Wait till the solar panels hit the dumps.
They can extract the minerals from used solar panels nowadays. But those wind turbine blades....
There are no free lunches. Just as much pollution is created in mining and refining the minerals used in the fabrication of windmills, as in conventional ways of generating electric power.
It looks like you're my competition.
I was thinking of chopping them up and introducing a new breakfast cereal.
Well landfills do need fill...
I suspect wind power is all about crony land deals and nothing else. Left is just a bunch of useful idiots. It’s hard to imagine these make any economic sense when you consider the wattage per acre and maintenance unless the government is handing out free money.
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