Image credit: Vattenfall
Europe is on track for a record win year, with 8.8 GW of new capacity installed in the first half of 2026, a 30% jump year on year. That’s enough electricity to power around seven million European households and replace fossil fuel imports equivalent to 25 LNG tankers a year, according to industry nonprofit WindEurope. copper, aluminium and concrete, composite materials make up the majority of their blades, and this is where the problem arises While 90% of a wind turbine’s mass is made of easily recyclable materials like steel. Since the landfill ban on blades, nacelle covers and nose cones in 2021, the Swedish startup Vattenfall has come up with some creative alternatives, with houses and skis being some of them. Four metres wide, 10 metres long and three metres high, the box once sat atop an Austrian wind turbine. It was showcased at Dutch Design Week in 2024 as part of an initiative exploring how materials could be reused with as little energy- and emissions-intensive processing as possible. After being decommissioned in 2023, the 57 blades from the Danish onshore wind farm Nørre Økse Sø found new life as a facade for a multi-storey car park in the city of Lund. Wind turbine blades can be between 50 and 100 metres long and are designed to spin in harsh weather for up to 25 years. Aiming to achieve 100 per cent circularity for these composite materials by 2030, Vattenfall is working on new ways of reusing, repurposing, refurbishing and recycling blades.
“Separating the composite materials from the resin requires specialised processes, often involving high temperatures or other energy-intensive treatment methods,” Eva Julius-Philipp, Director of Environment and Sustainability of Business Area Wind at Vattenfall, told Euronews Earth. “Projects such as the Tiny House, blade-based building projects and recycled skis are not yet a large-scale solution, however, they are intended to help us gain experience, develop new applications and stimulate the market for circular solutions,” said Julius-Philipp. “When composite materials cannot be recycled at a high value, they can be processed through energy recovery and/or cement co-processing,” said Julius-Philipp.
As much as wind turbines are important, once their blades are decommissioned, all that’s left for them is to live in landfills for years. But for every turbine that goes up, one comes down. And manufacturers are still trying to figure out how to make sure that none of the materials goes to waste. “In some cases, these processes can affect the quality and value of the recovered materials, making large-scale recycling more challenging. From the ground or even further away, the grandeur of wind turbines often goes unnoticed. Putting it into perspective, Vattenfall teamed up with design studio Superuse to turn a retired wind turbine nacelle cover – which houses the mechanical and electrical equipment – into a compact living space. It’s now a tiny house fitted with a kitchen, bathroom and living space equipped with a heat pump, solar panels and a solar water heater. Blades, as well, have been re-envisioned as building materials. It’s opened the door to a multitude of inventive uses for retired blades, from frames for solar panels to alpine skis. Provided it’s safe to do so, extending the operational lifetime of existing components through reuse and refurbishment is the preferred option, she added. What makes them so durable is also what makes them difficult to recycle: materials such as glass fibre, carbon fibre, epoxy resin, balsa wood, metals and various fillers pressed tightly together in layers.
As the first generation of major European wind farms reaches the end of its operational lifespan in the coming years, more blades will enter retirement, increasing the need for solutions that are “scalable, cost-efficient and low in energy use,” she added. “What is needed now is a regulatory framework that enables circular value chains and secondary raw materials to scale,” said Julius-Philipp, who hopes the European Commission’s Circular Economy Act, expected to be proposed later this year, will help provide it. Currently, Vattenfall uses mechanical recycling processes to turn blade material into composite flakes or fillers for new products, while pyrolysis, a thermal recycling process, recovers fibres and other secondary materials. The EU has not yet enforced a ban on landfilling decommissioned blades. Only Austria, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands have their own binding national bans, and WindEurope is now pushing Brussels to make the commitment legally binding across all member states. Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.