We spent decades making wind energy cleaner. Now we’re learning how to make the turbines themselves circular.
Wind turbines can generate clean energy for decades, but their blades are much harder to deal with when they reach the end of their life.
New European research is exploring ways to recover materials from used blades and bring those materials back into new products instead of sending them to landfill or downcycling them.
What I find most interesting is the lesson behind this: making energy renewable is only one part of the transition. The technologies we use to produce that energy also need a circular life cycle.
Clean energy shouldn’t have to mean linear materials.