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 thats just a fraction of whats 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 cant easily be crushed, recycled or repurposed, Bloomberg notes.
Thats 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. Were just gearing up.
Until demand for the companys 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.
The leading edge gets pitted and broken from bird hits, sand, warpage etc.
What’s really fun is when they use solar powered helicopters to de-ice the blades in the winter time.
If wind turbines had been proposed by anybody except the left, they would have been shot down...probably literally.
They’re noisy, they chew up migrating birds as if they were wood chippers, they have ruined many of the most beautiful mountain ridges in Europe and the US...and they’re inefficient. So now it turns out they’re unrecyclable. What more?
I wish these things would go away. And I’m not that fond of solar farms, either. They literally set fire to birds that fly over them, if the Dems want to look for “global warming” somewhere they should look there, and they are appearing in many formerly beautiful agricultural areas or even remote formerly beautiful desert or mountain recreational areas. I was driving through Georgia recently and I saw that huge amounts of their flat, sunny agricultural land have been converted to solar farms.
Petroleum, esp. natural gas, is probably the safest, cleanest form of energy there is at the moment. Nuclear is good too, and there are other technologies in the pipeline. But wind and even solar (except limited use on your housetop or to power outdoor lighting) is not the way to go.
Could figure out a way to use them in the Southern border wall...
Thanks for that picture. It really helps bring home the environmental disaster "green" brings. Wait until this generation's wave of no longer rechargeable batteries hits.
When they say GREEN energy, it’s code word for greenbacks in the Deep State’s pocket.
Flexing. Flex it enough times and it weakens.
Also, IDIOT "journalist" doesn't know the difference between plastic and fiberglass.
Fiberglass is literally glass fibers and resin.
"Journalist" thinks since it's man made white and smooth, it's plastic.
Literally thinking sand = oil.
Most "journalists" know so little, they don't know what they don't know, so are unable to ask the right questions.
In the San Gorgonio Pass, just east of Palm Springs. I looked on the gate of a fence surrounding some of them back in 2001, and the energy company emblem was there with a big spiel about clean energy.
Most “journalists” know so little, they don’t know what they don’t know, so are unable to ask the right questions.
queue the exploding wind turbine...
I don’t know how you guys add video, but I enjoy them!
How much energy does it take to make the blades and component parts? How much energy to maintain these structures - - how much energy to haul the crap away?
When you add it up... it says wind mills are a virtue signalling hobby for white liberal 'elites' who can't do math.
They’re mostly composites, so burn them and landfill the ashes.
Ship them to CA and turn them into homeless tent communities.
Wind turbines can have 80 gallons or more of lubricant, and must be changed regularly. No small feat up to 300 ft. above ground.
Shred/grind them up and add them to concrete used in construction
...
Good idea, and from the bottom of the article where few humans ever go:
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. Were just gearing up.
I think that they would make very good breakwaters or artificial reefs!
Wend them to Venice, or use them as stilts or platforms for cities in the seas!
https://inhabitat.com/7-futuristic-floating-cities-that-could-save-humanity/
(Do these not seem as impractical as giant leftist whinemills! (sic) Sheep on the islands? (Its not Johnsons Restaruant in Sister Bay!) More Sci fantasy that science!)
Sorry for the slide! Breakwaters, artificial reefs it is!
They are FRP, are they not? Best and worst of both worlds.
SS Commander Friedrich Jeckeln is rolling in his grave for stealing his idea.
Use them to build the border wall.
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. Were just gearing up.
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