The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE's) Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) has announced its intent to release the Wind Turbine Technology Recycling Funding Opportunity, planning to invest $20 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
This funding will address technological and supply chain challenges limiting recycling of fibre-reinforced composites and rare earth element magnets in wind turbines; accelerate the creation of more easily recyclable and reusable designs; and speed up the development of end-of-life processing technologies to cost-effectively, sustainably, and efficiently recycle and recover materials from wind turbines, including manufacturing waste. The funding opportunity focuses on three topic areas.
Topic Area 1: Enabling Sustainable Wind Turbine Components
This topic supports projects to de-risk sustainable and recyclable wind turbine component designs, accelerating commercial acceptance. Current industry practices face challenges with recycling fibre-reinforced composites and critical materials. Innovations in the industry promise enhanced recyclability, reduced maintenance complexity, and efficient manufacturing. Key components are blades and generators using critical materials. Successful projects will demonstrate sustainability and de-risking for commercialisation.
Topic Area 2: Enabling Wind Turbine Material Recycling and Reuse Processes
This topic supports commercial-scale demonstration and commercialisation of recycling technologies for wind turbine materials. Current recycling processes are effective for most materials, but lack domestic solutions for fibre-reinforced composites and critical metallic components. With many turbines to be decommissioned, novel recycling processes are needed to improve sustainability. Successful projects will demonstrate economic, scalable recycling methods addressing end-of-life products and factory waste.
Topic Area 3: Recycled and Recyclable Material Qualification
This topic addresses the need for qualification and certification of new and recycled materials. It proposes a research collaborative to develop standards and methodologies for certifying recycled materials for wind energy technologies. Led by an impartial research organisation, the collaborative would include partners from various sectors, aiming to create industry-informed certification standards and potentially act as a certification body.
