Chris Howell, Sr. VP of Recycling Operations at Veolia, joined us to talk about their partnership with GE Renewables for wind turbine blade recycling, in which blades can be made into both fuel for cement kilns and cement itself. With more and more blades reaching the end of their usable life, the problem of what to do with these massive composite structures is a growing one. Rather than bury blades in landfills, which caused a media uproar back in 2020, Veolia hopes to solve the logistical problems of transportation with their shredding techniques and more innovations still in the works.



? Learn more from Veolia's partnership with GE here, and visit Veolia North America on the web.



Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! 







Transcript: On Recycling Wind Turbine Blades & A Circular Economy



This episode is brought to you by weather guard lightning tech at Weather Guard. We make lightning protection easy. If your wind turbines are due for maintenance or repairs, install our strike tape retrofit LPS upgrade. At the same time, a strikeTape installation is the quick, easy solution that provides a dramatic, long lasting boost to the factory lightning



protection system. Forward thinking wind site owners install strike tape today to increase uptime tomorrow. Learn more in the show notes of today's podcast. Welcome back. I'm Dan BlueT.



I'm Allen Hall.



And I'm Rosemary Barnes



And this is the Uptime podcast bringing you the latest in wind energy, tech news and policy. All right, welcome back to the Uptime Podcast. I'm your co-host, Dan Blewett I'm joined here today by Allen Hall. No Rosemary Barnes today on the show.



She couldn't make it with her crazy Australian time zone. We love having on the show, but sometimes, you know, those 13 hour differences will get you. But look for her back on the show and next week. But today, we have an amazing guest.



Today, we are talking with Chris Howell from Veolia. He is the senior director of recycling operations there. He's also a Navy veteran and a graduate of the Navy. And nuclear program is a subject matter expert on mining, metals and power production.



And he's been with the oil for twenty seven years. So he knows the company inside and out. And we're going to be talking to him today about our hour, about their partnership with GE on shredding and recycling winter and blades into cement.



So, Allen what were some of your takeaways from today's talk with Chris Howell?



Well, Chris and Veolia have taken on a really large problem, which is as when turbines become decommissioned, what do you do with those massive blades? And currently, we are bearing in them in some parts of the world, like in Germany, the burying of blades is outlawed.



So we need to find another solution in the United States and across the world. And and Chris and Veolia have stepped up to to find a method and an economical method to take the existence of existing Blaize off the turbines, break them down, grind them up and and recycle them, put them reuse them for energy production or



creation of cement, which is just totally fascinating and a really unique engineering exercise. So this interview from an engineering standpoint is really cool.



Yeah. And, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, on the Web, in the public, in the media, if you will, just like, yeah, recycle these things, you know, like and they just like wash their hands of it.



Right. But it's really, really complicated. That's part of the reason everyone's trying to do more and more manufacturing on site, a new wind farms.