“We are literally filling the scars of the fossil fuel age with the waste of the renewable age. ‘Net Zero’ cannot mean ‘Net Landfill’.” (- Blue Oceans Solutions, below)
Blue Oceans Solutions is concerned. “If you drive deep enough into the high desert near Casper, Wyoming,” their post states, “you will find a burial ground that shouldn’t exist.”
It isn’t for people. It’s for the “clean energy” revolution. Rows of massive, fiberglass wind turbine blades—cut into thirds with diamond-encrusted saws—are being stacked thirty feet deep in the earth. From the air, they look like the bleached rib cages of leviathans.
Continuing:
We built wind turbines to save the future, but we forgot to design them for the end. While 85% of a turbine (steel, copper, electronics) is highly recyclable, the blades are not. They are built to withstand hurricane-force winds for 20 years. They are composites of fiberglass and resin, designed specifically never to break down. When they die, they become “Zombie Waste.” You can’t melt them (they just burn). You can’t crush them easily. So, we bury them.
Big problems are ahead:
The scale is staggering. The U.S. alone is decommissioning roughly 8,000 blades a year—a number that will explode to millions of tons by 2050. As municipal landfills (like Casper’s) run out of space or refuse to take them, regulators in states like Wyoming have opened a new door. We are now permitting the burial of these “green” blades inside abandoned coal mines.
We are literally filling the scars of the fossil fuel age with the waste of the renewable age. “Net Zero” cannot mean “Net Landfill”
“Net landfill” is probably an exaggeration given what landfill technology can do to seal the waste (and build a golf course over it). But if wind turbines are dying out far sooner than what is the claim–say 10-15 years instead of 20-30 years–the scale of disposal is an issue.
This is the uncomfortable truth we need to face: We are currently solving a carbon crisis by creating a material crisis. The “bury it and forget it” era is over. The next green billion-dollar opportunity isn’t in erecting more turbines; it’s in closing the loop.
We need blades that can be chemically dissolved, not just buried. We need “Material Passports” that track every blade from factory to grave. If we don’t solve the back end of the green transition, we aren’t saving the planet. We’re just redecorating the landfill.
Recycling industrial wind turbines (blades, etc.) can add cost to cost for a technology that is not competitive to begin with for grid electricity. Landfill disposal is costly too. The ecological bargain by Big Green to support industrial wind and solar is not looking good, particularly if and when retrofits are uneconomic without an extension of expiring tax breaks.
And if industrial wind is on its own (without the PTC or ITC, as scheduled for the end of next year), will decommissions grow and exceed new capacity additions?