Authors

Shangyu Yang, Guanyu Chen, Tianze Liu

Research Question

How much do the manufacture and end-of-life disposal of wind turbine blades erode the climate benefit that wind energy delivers? The project maps retired blade disposal across the US, quantifies greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and landfilling, and evaluates how policy reforms could reduce the environmental impact of blade waste.

Background

Wind turbine blades are made from energy-intensive virgin fiberglass and thermoset resins. At end of life, they are mostly landfilled or incinerated without energy recovery, generating emissions that quietly erode the climate benefit the turbines were built to deliver. With 10,000 to 20,000 blades projected to retire each year by 2040, this gap is one of the most consequential unresolved accounting problems in clean energy policy.

Wind electricity flows directly into the grids that power cities, so how decommissioned blades are managed affects whether urban energy systems meet their net-zero commitments. Lifecycle GHG accounting is increasingly required in urban sustainability planning, infrastructure procurement and climate disclosure.

Methodology

The project involves:

• Constructing an integrated lifecycle GHG analysis of wind turbine blades across three phases:
  • Embodied emissions from virgin fiberglass and blade production.
  • CO₂ displacement over a turbine's operational lifetime.
  • Emissions from six end-of-life scenarios, ranging from landfill and incineration to mechanical recycling.
• Mapping end-of-life turbine clusters against regional grid carbon intensity to identify where disposal decisions carry the greatest climate stakes.
• Applying data engineering, geospatial analysis and quantitative modeling to large federal datasets.
• Evaluating how policy reforms could reduce the environmental impacts of blade waste.

Deliverables

• Academic paper
• Data visualizations
• Interactive data dashboard

Data Sources

• EIA Form 923 generation records
• U.S. Wind Turbine Database
• EPA eGRID regional emissions inventories