Avangrid donates wind turbine blades to startup for recycling solution

Avangrid donated 300 pounds of decommissioned wind turbine blades to a startup company to test its process for blade recycling.

The startup is called WindLoop, launched by students at Yale University with the mission to build a circular economy for the wind industry by recycling wind turbine components.

“Avangrid is one of America’s most innovative leaders in renewable energy, and this is yet another example of our forward-thinking approach to accelerating a clean energy transition across the United States,” Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra said. “We recognize the great challenges in front of us, and we are helping lay the groundwork to find new and efficient methods to recycle blades that will improve the circularity of our industry.”

Wind turbine blade recycling has long been a challenge due to the expense of transporting blades and extracting blade materials, like glass fiber and epoxy resin.

WindLoop’s strategy incorporates an on-site blade shredder, which has been shown to significantly reduce transportation costs from wind farm to recycling facility. It also developed a process to separate the fibers and resin in blades that allows it to recover over 90 percent of turbine blade material and 97 percent of the overall value of the blades.

“For a future powered by solar, wind, and energy storage, we need to minimize waste and ensure that materials are recycled for the next wave of clean energy manufacturing,” Shubh Jain, CEO and co-founder of WindLoop, said. “Currently, there is no large-scale industrial process for recycling wind turbine blades, and companies are facing increasing pressure to find recycling facilities that offer circular recycling solutions. WindLoop seeks to bridge this gap. Avangrid’s support is essential for WindLoop to carry out advanced R&D and bring its novel recycling process for wind turbine blades to market. Our shared commitment to developing a circular economy for wind energy in America makes this partnership especially promising.”

Recycling turbine components will become increasingly important to the maturing U.S. wind industry as repowering becomes more common. Repowering involves the replacement of some or all parts of a wind turbine once they reach 10-15 years old to increase efficiency.

“Sustainability is at the core of every decision we make at Avangrid, and serves as a guiding principle in our business,” Laney Brown, vice president of sustainability at Avangrid, said. “Blade recycling is a key component to the sustainable use of resources as we support the clean energy transition. We are pleased to work with forward-thinkers like WindLoop to develop circular solutions that minimize environmental impacts in our industry.”

The donated turbine blades came from Avangrid’s Baffin wind farm in Kenedy County, Texas.

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