Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fuoqi 1755 days ago
Today most of wind turbine blades get literally buried in specialized landfills [0]. Companies which produce them promise to boost recycling rate in a decade or so, but right now it's just yet another externality. Proper recycling simply costs more and it's not given that there is enough capacity for materials produced from recycled blades (you can find a similar story with plastic recycling).

[0]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8294057/Hundreds-no...
2 comments
choeger 1755 days ago
There are no rare materials used in the blades.

That being said, yes, the recycling (and presumably also the environmental impact while they are running and constantly weathered) of these composites remains problematic. But they don't end up in land fills in Germany, at least:

https://www.energieagentur.nrw/blogs/erneuerbare/beitraege/r...

link
creato 1755 days ago
The post I replied to implied metals and rare earth materials were being thrown away. That is the part I doubt.

For materials like the blades, we need to compare this to alternatives. The lack of recycling may be insignificant compared to the amount of materials consumed by non-renewable power sources (e.g. coal, oil), purely in terms of environmental impact from mining the materials, let alone GHG emissions.

link