when turbines are cleaning up our energy, but not without drawbacks, that's after the break. a mike look who thanks for watching and bye for now. the, [000:00:00;00] the . so you don't think and feel the same way you expect and want different things from life and your parents. i just want to pursue what steps my saw on fire or you think your kid is 2 different, risky, irresponsible,

unreasonable stuff. i want my son to join the clubs. it's time to, to us. and then when generations class this week on d. w. the look at this bus stop this bridge and this playground. notice anything. let's take another look. the old made of wind turbine blades because it looks cool. yeah. but it's also because we don't really know what else to do with them once that one out . we can recycle up to 90 percent of the turbine like to steal it from the towel or the cop up from all the wires. but the gigantic blades mostly get dumped into landfills. a field day for opponents of wind energy, the big wind turbine junky, are they just lying around? there's nothing much renewable about these things,

but the wind industry won't let that stand. and they're working on making winter event, let's recyclable, and saving the green image. if it's as good as people say, it's going to be absolutely transformer to the big question is, can they? and what difference would it make? the chinese wind energy company many young, recently bragged about this new winter by the largest in the world. they say it's got to rotate dime itself, 260 meters, making each blade a good bit taller than the statue of liberty. of course, this is an extreme example, but even for the front of the mill, wind turbine, possibly upon these things are massive and extremely study. they're designed to be strong and blast through all sorts of weather conditions for 202530 years. this is open cooperman, an engineer who studies the entire life cycle of wind turbines. wind turbine blades are mainly made of glass, so common fibers and stuff called

a poxy residue. this acts like a plastic super glue that binds them together. you end up with a very strong and resilient material, and that's great when the plates up and running, but separating those components. we can't easily to this is claire bio who spend 30 g is researching how to best recycle, all kinds of materials. and that's really been the appropriate i'm here to, we've got these huge wind turbine blades, but we've got difficult to recycle materials because they're combined with spots of putting up wind turbines and lodging numbers throughout the 19 ninety's. this 1st wave of slides is now being retired. the easiest and most common way to deal with them is to simply check them into landfills. and this might sound horrible, but it's actually not that bad. more than the lights and future, the piles of spin plates are only going to grow. we're putting up more and more wind turbines for good reasons, to deliver some of the cheapest and cleanest electricity that's available to us.

but that also means that by 2050 we'll have an estimated 43000000 metric tons of retired lights and dumping them into landfills and forgetting about them as a massive waste of materials. so let's look at some ideas on how to stuff that just one way to deal with old blades is by using brute force, we can burn off the plastic pots or use strong chemicals to dissolve it. what remains is the fiber that can be used to make new things like cost planes or snowboards. both of these processes on perfect all of these take a loss of energy and the products that you get. because the degraded by the various this technology is using by the, the brutal methods using to separate the components finish a strong dose is used to produce

a work. so you don't get so much venue from any recycling process has to be economic coupon apple. and this is the roads that recently a different approach has become popular. turns out the materials and turn on plates are pretty good for making something else if that cut into pieces and then shredded that can be used in some and production. you get some energy from the plastic parts of the blade, the resin of that is heated. it gives off energy and then you're left with this char glass remains and that goes into concrete. and so you're able to recover some materials and use them for a common material. and then you're also able to recover some energy. waste management from the old has popped up with general electric to do exactly that on the large scale in the us. they say they've already recycled over 3000 blades this way. and that's not the only benefit by burning shred, it's going to event lights instead of cold cement because could save up to 27

percent of c o. 2 emissions according so when the analysis by a consulting firm, if you have cement industry, which is located close enough to the place that you've got your wind turbine blades, that this is actually something which is problem. it's economically advantages and it's environmentally favorable as well. and certainly better than landfill bucks, wouldn't it be better still if we could use also on the lights to make new ones we really need to ensure that we get into a certain level and get it into the state of the life cycle designs. this is maxine here again, sniffle ring leaks the sustainability department and see montgomery. so one of the world's largest wind turbine manufacturers, they develop what they called the recycle blades, which you might have guessed as a plates that's supposed to be easily recyclable. that's down to a new type of resume. they've invented red. okay,

let me read the saw easily in the middle. so at the end of july and then the solution separate space exceed a residence on the last 5 a you have a comment to you or is so that we can recover the separated materials again and use them for new products. for the moment, these new products of things like suitcases, suitcases will cost nothing new blights. the plan is to ultimately close the loop, but small research is still needed. it's just, there hasn't been enough time to really validate that the blade has same performance over the same period of time and that it can practically be recycled at that large scale. so i think that's the next challenges to demonstrate all those things at scale. the recycle blades uh more expensive than traditional ones. how much exactly a few minutes go may. so i wouldn't say about the already being used in some when projects. unfortunately, siemens can me. so i also wouldn't say how high the sales total sales. this is something we cannot disclose, which is

a shame because obviously the more often we use now the more of a dentist slate waste, the solution could make down the line. clear is that it doesn't help with traditional blades we have to deal with now. so you will not see the impact about until 25 or 30 years, but those plans are being taken down. this is lisa, extremity who's head of sustainability, invest us another leading wind turbine manufacturer that taking a different approach in their recycling strategy. as soon as we have scaled up our solution, we can always talk recycling and fox issues plates that we put up many years ago. and that can be taken down now as well as future plates. they say they figured out a way to separate the materials and existing to them plates and make them a usable, including the epoxy resin. it's supposedly done with a chemical solution that breaks it down. it would mean that she was taking up to

find place which shipping they didn't learn. so if we're using this is where the buttons, which are now coming on stream in exponentially increasing quantities. that's the great hope for the future. invest us doesn't let on much about the new process, just that so far it's only been proven in the lab. then that will be testing it, the new real world for 2 years to see if it can be scaled up. what we do know is that the chemical solution, the s, it's nothing exciting is chemicals that you will find all the show. and of course, gives us very good indications that this has up to be a very cost competitive. so let's recap. there's a bunch of ideas out there on how to take a blade waste, some of that already work at scale, and some that still have to prove they do wind power companies across the board of throwing money at this end. while researching the story, i've repeatedly wondered why, if you ask them they will say something like this. 15 for the cheese at the club or

business. it is over there and i was calling about the mate, which somehow only felt like half the onset. i mean, don't get me wrong for only things in the dump and forgetting about all the materials that went into making them should not be the way forward, but with old blades, it looks and feels a lot worse than it is. i mean, these things are literally built to not decompose, should be pretty stable. they will just stay the bass case. so the problem with landfilling is really the plates take up a lot of space. you remember i said that will be 43000000 tons of this kind of blades by 2050. well, that will be 12000000000 tons of plastic waste and landfills and the environment by then. if we drive in waste, it's very likely not going to be down to wind turbine blades, but that's not the point. impact with caustic waste. it's tiny compared to adults with other bits of waste. it's tiny. but it's really important in the public high, it's social eye clinic. so we've got these huge with the turbines,

which are making green electricity for us. and people say, yes, bought at the end of life, you've got pulse of the structure which you're going to landfill. gas is not greed . so it's hot cheap, really to improve the meet you wind turbine technology in the public domain. that's the of a bit of the answer. any blemish and it's green credentials makes wind power and easy target for those who want to discredited and work in all the way. if we have with big, with these renewable energy, isn't renewable at all for the winter in the stream. solving the recycling challenge is the best way to live up to their image and future prove that business . so what do you think? how should we deal with old wind turbines? let's let us loan to come in since don't forget to get subscribed for. movie deals

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the climate change con, jeopardize anti economic sectors and take away people's livelihoods. what's in many cases, such solutions can help us to adapt ad opportunities to make life better for rules . welcome to a new edition of a co op or go. i'm presented loads that idea area. once again, we've got the pack show for you today. let's dive straight to coming up empowering