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Still, thousands of old blades have been cut into pieces and laid to rest in landfills, where the fiber-reinforced plastic will never break down. Cork, Ireland, is experimenting with using retired blades to construct bridges. In the Netherlands, one city turned the old blades into a playground. Renewable Energy, a division of General Electric, announced that it would begin recycling the blades by shredding them into raw material for use in cement manufacturing. Over the next two years, an estimated 35,000 of those blades will be decommissioned and need somewhere to go. alone, there are an estimated 54,000 turbines in operation at the moment with 164,000 blades, according to Global Fiberglass Solutions. When they are replaced, the old blades become a challenge, from transporting them out of the field to finding a place to store the blades, which can be longer than a Boeing 747 wing.įinding an environmentally friendly and economical way to dispose of the blades will become a growing problem.
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Wind turbine blades last an average of about 25 to 30 years. Sweetwater prides itself on its energy production as shown with its welcome sign along the Interstate 20. Today, President Joe Biden’s call for investing in America’s clean energy resources, including wind, fuels hopes of more opportunities to come.īut for all the benefits the wind turbines have brought to Sweetwater, a critical question remains: What to do with the worn-out wind turbine blades when they are replaced? Sweetwater’s wind energy industry started in the late 1990s and has fueled the local economy with turbine-related jobs and a boom for landowners. If Texas was a country, it would rank fifth among the world’s wind energy producers. Texas produces more wind energy than any other state in the country, much of it here off of Interstate 20. The blade stands as a symbol of the importance of the wind energy industry to this city on the edge of the Texas plains.