Friday 15 October 2021

Vestas targets 100% recyclable wind turbine blades by 2030

Vestas has announced its new target of recycling 100% of its turbine blades by 2030 under its latest circularity roadmap.

The Danish firm has set out a comprehensive set of commitments to be implemented across its value chain to accelerate its journey to reach zero-waste turbines by 2040.

Its targets include increasing material efficiency by 90% and reducing supply chain waste by 50% by 2030, in addition to expand efforts to refurbish and reuse turbine components whilst regionalising its repair and refurbishment infrastructure where possible.

While the major components of a turbine are largely refurbished already, the roadmap commits Vestas to achieve a 55% total refurbished component utilisation by 2030 and 75% by 2040, largely by creating new repair loops for minor components.

This is expected to further reduce waste while cutting carbon emissions and driving the creation of local jobs.

In addition, Vestas is also committing to reduce the amount of manufacturing waste ending up in landfill to less than 1%, along with ensuring more than 94% of manufacturing materials are recycled by 2030 – a significant increase from 52% of materials being currently recycled.

Lisa Ekstrand, Senior Director and Head of Sustainability at Vestas said: “Eliminating waste from the turbine lifecycle is dependent on building a fully circular value chain. To succeed in this journey, it’s crucial for industry leaders to build mature pathways towards circularity and ensure these are fully adopted across their value chains, as this will help nurture the technological innovation, material volume and stakeholder collaboration needed to grow an industry-wide circular economy.

“This approach is at the heart of Vestas’ circularity roadmap, and through it, we aim to pave the way towards a fully circular economy for the wind industry.”