Thursday, February 27, 2020

Give Wind a Break

By Wanter Uja, Law Clerk


Wind energy is generating a lot of controversy because while most parts of a wind turbine can be recycled or at least repurposed on another wind farm, the turbine blades are a different story. Roughly 90% of a wind turbine can be recycled since they are made out of steel, copper and other materials that can be broken down. Made out of resin and fiber glass, turbine blades are built to withstand hurricane winds and cannot be easily recycled; as such, not many options exist to recycle them. The current methods of disposing wind turbine blades include burning them and burying them in landfills, neither of which are necessarily environmentally friendly. Some researchers have determined that over the next 20 years, roughly 720,000 tons of blade material will be disposed of, and this number does not include the new high capacity versions.

Wind turbines are built to last between 20-25 years, but since their efficiency reduces as their mechanical parts—including the blades—degrade, they have to be retired sometimes just 14 years after they are installed. As it stands, about 870 blades have been dumped in a municipal Wyoming landfill. The non-recyclability of these blades seems to run counter to the greenness of wind energy, and therein lies the problem. Given the rapid development of wind energy, it is understandable how this might be worrisome, especially considering the need to switch to non-emitting sources of energy in the coming years.

It is, however, important to look at energy production holistically. First of all, wind turbine blades are landfill-safe and represent only a small fraction of the overall solid waste contained in municipal landfills. Secondly, the company Global Fiber Glass Solutions has started the slow but steady process of breaking down fiber glass into pellets that can be used for construction, sparking the interest of numerous manufacturers. One of those manufacturers is IKEAwhich has pledged to use only recycled plastic by 2030. This presents a potential opportunity to recycle used wind turbine blades into new materials and products.

More importantly, regardless of how seemingly environmentally unfriendly the disposal of wind turbine blades is, wind energy cannot and indeed should not be traded for other fossil fuels. It is now settled that if there is to be any chance of slowing down climate change, there must be a shift to renewables by 2035. Production of electricity from coal, for example, causes more harm to the environment than burying turbine blades. Burning coal in coal-fired power plants produces fly ash that is usually disposed of in waterways with a permit or in landfills. Coal contains trace elements of acidic matter like uraniumarsenic and mercury, including other substances that are toxic to human life. Fly ash, which comes from combustion of this coal, is more concentrated and especially dangerous to groundwater. Furthermore, particles from fly ash can become lodged in your lungs and trigger asthma and inflammation, and has been known to even cause death. Fly ash is especially harmful because the chemicals in the ash are able to escape and move through the environment.

Although natural gas produces methane emissions, there is no question that it produces way fewer emissions than coal. However, in addition to the fact that drilling gas wells disturbs vegetation, people, wildlife and sometimes water resources, gas flaring releases carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and many other toxic compounds. Natural gas is wrought with examples of methane release due to shoddy leaking pipes. Methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, endangers the lives of people when it is released into the atmosphere. Hydraulic fracturing has also been linked to infertility, miscarriages and birth defects.

The world’s leading scientists have agreed that climate change is being hastened by the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, most of which are emitted from electricity production. Mitigation and adaptation plans include a shift to renewable or non-emitting energy resources. Flowing from the above, it is clear that burying wind turbine blades poses far less risk to the environment than the continued use of fossil fuels.

While acknowledging that burying turbine blades in perpetuity is not ideal, these blades as stated are landfill safe, and with the growth and development of wind energy, technology will advance that will enable them to be recycled faster and/or repurposed to some other use.  In the meantime, give wind a break—it is good for our planet.

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