A Downside To Wind Turbines – Scrapping Them Safely
“Decommissioning wind farms is suddenly a big business, or environmental headache. Turbine blades made from fiberglass can only be cut up and buried in landfills. Wyoming is doing it for abandoned wind farms there. ”
Wind energy has made giant strides within the renewable energy space, and is being pushed to take on an even greater role in the future, especially for offshore wind. Wind turbines have grown in size, enabling them to harvest more power per installation than earlier turbine versions. The problem is what to do with them when their useful life ends, often about the same time as their subsidy payments? Many of us remember the idled wind turbines were covering the hills leading surrounding passes we drove when heading into California. They were constructed in the 1970s in response to the energy crisis of that era, but soon became useless.
Last year, a popular story on Facebook was that there were 14,000 abandoned wind turbines in California. Politifact decided to check out the story by talking with Paul Gipe, a former wind energy company executive and the author of several books about wind energy. He disputed the number, saying that he was the author of the figure that 14,000 wind turbines existed in California, but only 4,500 have been abandoned and around 500 are still standing.
Wind farm developers are required to provide a plan for decommissioning of the turbines, and since most of them are installed on private land, landowners are likely to hold them to their commitments. But, the blades of wind turbines are made from fiberglass that cannot be recycled or repurposed. Fortunately, fiberglass is inert and considered nonhazardous when buried in landfills, which is what is happening.
Exhibit 14. A Wyoming Landfill With Wind Turbine Blades SOURCE: Getty Images
A story about the burying of wind turbine blades in a landfill in Wyoming swept social media recently. The story and pictures proved accurate, based on an investigation by the investigative reporters at Snopes. Moreover, Bloomberg Green, the environmental news site for Bloomberg News, published an article not only documenting the story, but amplifying it. They reported that 8,000 turbines per year are expected to be dismantled in the United States each year for at least the next four, which will add to the landfill challenge. In the Wyoming landfill’s case, it is only accepting wind turbine blades from three Wyoming wind farms.
Exhibit 15. Wind Turbine Blades Ready For Burial SOURCE: Bloomberg Green
Due to their size – often as long as a 747 – the blades have to be cut into multiple pieces to facilitate their handling and burial. In Wyoming, the 120-foot-long turbines are cut into three 40-foot lengths and the smaller sections are placed within the larger pieces. Each turbine blade is then buried within a cell that measures a maximum of 44 cubic yards, or about the size of about three cement-mixer trucks. The effort involved, although usually paid for by the wind farm developer, is an economic and environmental cost of renewable energy generally ignored by the green energy activists.
According to Wayne Christian, a commissioner of the Texas Railroad Commission, it costs about $200,000 to decommission a wind turbine, roughly 10 times the cost of abandoning an oil well, and over a 30-year shorter energy-producing life. He also points out that contrary to Texas regulations, a wind farm developer does not have to provide financial assurance for cleaning up a site, either through posting a bond or a deposit to cover the decommissioning cost in the event the developer fails to remove the turbine. That means state taxpayers may be on the hook for the clean-up cost, as opposed energy producers who are subject to rules requiring them to provide financial assurances to cover the cost of plugging and abandoning oil and gas wells. Mr. Christian said the cost to abandon the 12,000 wind turbines currently operating in Texas could reach $2.3 billion.
The Wyoming wind farms being dismantled are from 1990, or the start of the recent wind energy push. In the future, as more wind farms are abandoned, disposal of turbine blades will become an escalating cost, especially since wind turbine lives are a fraction of the life of a fossil fuel power plant, while also only producing power intermittently.