Full Title: Wind Turbine Recycling Assessment Report: A Guide to Sustainable Recycling Industry
Author(s): U.S. Department of Energy
Publisher(s): U.S. Department of Energy
Publication Date: January 9, 2025
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The primary goal of this report—which is part one of two—is to communicate findings from this assessment on how alternate materials, designs, and manufacturing processes could enable more efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally responsible disassembly and resource recovery from wind energy technologies. Part 1 (this report) establishes a baseline by assessing existing U.S. recycling infrastructure and determining whether the U.S. economy has the necessary technologies to disassemble and recycle major wind energy system components under a plausible high-deployment wind technology scenario. Part 2 (forthcoming) provides a deep-dive assessment of recovering materials from difficult-to-recycle system components, such as blades and rare earth permanent magnets in generators and reusing these recovered materials in potential future component designs or other secondary markets. The findings from this work may help prioritize RD&D investment spending to meet the goals in section 3003(b)(4) of the Energy Act of 2020.