Cement giant LafargeHolcim is teaming up with GE’s renewables unit on wind turbine recycling

Published

3 years ago

June 14, 2021

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Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images

General Electric’s renewables unit and LafargeHolcim, the world’s biggest cement manufacturer, have struck a deal to explore the recycling of wind turbine blades.

A memorandum of understanding will see the companies focus on exploring “circular economy solutions.” Business practices connected to the notion of a circular economy have gained traction in recent years, with many companies around the world looking to operate in a way which minimizes waste.

In a statement Thursday, the firms added they were looking into “new ways of recycling wind blades, including as a construction material to build new wind farms.”

The plans announced this week build on an already existing relationship between the two companies. Last June, GE Renewable Energy said it was going to partner with LafargeHolcim and another firm, COBOD International, to develop wind turbines that use 3D-printed concrete bases.

The issue of what to do with wind turbine blades when they’re no longer needed is a headache for the industry. This is because the composite materials used in their production can be difficult to recycle, with many blades ending up as landfill when their service life ends.

As governments around the world attempt to ramp up their renewable energy capacity, the number of wind turbines on the planet only looks set to grow. This will in turn increase pressure on the sector to find sustainable solutions to the disposal of blades.

Over the last few years, major players in wind energy have announced plans to try to tackle the problem. Just last week Denmark’s Orsted said it would “reuse, recycle, or recover” all turbine blades in its worldwide portfolio of wind farms once they’re decommissioned.

In April, it was announced that a collaboration between academia and industry would focus on the recycling of glass fiber products, a move that could eventually help to reduce the waste produced by wind turbine blades.

Last December, GE Renewable Energy and Veolia North America signed a “multi-year agreement” to recycle blades removed from onshore wind turbines in the United States. And in January 2020, wind energy giant Vestas said it was aiming to produce “zero-waste” turbines by the year 2040.

Environment

Daily EV Recap: Tesla Consolidates Leadership

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3 hours ago

May 7, 2024

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Daily EV Recap: Tesla Consolidates Leadership

Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from Electrek. Quick Charge is now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded Monday through Thursday and again on Saturday. Subscribe to our podcast in Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast player to guarantee new episodes are delivered as soon as they’re available.

Stories we discuss in this episode (with links)

UPDATE: FreeWire hasn’t closed its HQ just yet

Elon Musk’s no.2 at Tesla goes back to China as the CEO isolates himself at the top

Tesla (TSLA) launches another round of layoffs

Lilium (LILM) receives firm order from UrbanLink to put 20 eVTOL jets into service in Florida

In 2023, investment in clean energy manufacturing shot up 70% from 2022

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Environment

Microsoft signs deal with Swedish partner to remove 3.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide

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5 hours ago

May 6, 2024

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Microsoft signs deal with Swedish partner to remove 3.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide

A building of Stockholm Exergi in Stockholm, Sweden, Sept. 5, 2022.

He Miao | Xinhua | Getty Images

Microsoft signed a deal to remove to permanently remove 3.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide with Swedish energy company Stockholm Exergi, the companies announced on Monday.

The contract with Microsoft is the world’s largest carbon removal deal to date, Stockholm Exergi said in a statement. Delivery of the carbon removal certificates to Microsoft are planned to begin in 2028 and will continue for a decade, according to Stockholm Exergi.

The Swedish company, which provides power to the people of Stockholm, plans to build a carbon capture and storage project that will permanently remove 800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Construction on the carbon capture project is scheduled to start in 2025. The contract with Microsoft will help the project move closer to a final investment decision in the fourth quarter of this year, said Anders Egelrud, the CEO of Stockholm Exergi, in the statement.

The carbon capture project will be installed at Stockholm Exergi’s biomass power plant, which is the largest of its kind in Europe. The plant burns waste from the forestry industry and paper mills to produce heat and electricity.

Carbon dioxide released from those materials during incineration will be removed from the gas emitted from the plant, liquified for transport and permanently stored underground.

Stockholm Exergi is selling carbon removal certificates, equivalent to 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, to help companies achieve their net-zero emissions goals.

“Leveraging existing biomass power plants is a crucial first step to building worldwide carbon removal capacity,” said Brian Marrs, Microsoft’s senior director of energy and carbon removal, in a statement.

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WattEV opens US’ first megawatt charge station with 1.2MW speeds and solar

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6 hours ago

May 6, 2024

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WattEV opens US' first megawatt charge station with 1.2MW speeds and solar

WattEV has just opened the first electric truck charging depot in the US to use the new Megawatt Charge System, capable of delivering up to 1.2 megawatts of power, currently the highest-speed charger available in the US, along with solar and battery backup on-site and a unique partially grid-islanded setup.

WattEV says that its charge depot in Bakersfield, CA, includes the first MCS charger in North America, and the fastest as well. Tesla has a number of its own 750kW chargers deployed “behind-the-fence” in Pepsi and Tesla facilities, but this 1.2MW charger beats those in speed and is also publicly available.

MCS is a new charge standard being worked on by charging standards organization CharIN. The standard is close to being finished, though currently there aren’t really available MCS-capable trucks, or even UL-certified charging units.

WattEV CEO Salim Youssefzadeh displaying an MCS charger

As a result, WattEV’s installation is somewhat of an experiment. The site has 50 total chargers, split between 32 grid-tied 360kW CCS chargers on one side, and 3 1.2MW MCS and 15 240kW CCS chargers on the other side, attached to backup batteries and solar and fully grid-islanded.

That latter part is particularly interesting – WattEV got grants from the California Energy Commission to create this grid-islanded setup, wherein power for the chargers is fully provided by 5MW of on-site solar (which WattEV wants to expand to 25MW eventually) and 3MWh of battery backup.

WattEV could connect the setup to the grid, but between its grant from CEC, the lack of UL-certified MCS chargers, and delays that would have been caused in the permitting and interconnection process, it decided that grid-islanding half of the site would be the right decision for the time being.

The inclusion of an MCS charger promises the ability to fill a truck in the same time as a traditional truck rest stop. While trucks don’t currently have 1.2MW charging capability, WattEV wanted to be ready for when they do.

Notably, something many operators bring up is that they’re waiting for chargers before they start building or buying trucks. Here, however, we have an infrastructure provider out in the lead – building infrastructure before trucks are being built or purchased. In a world where operators have gotten used to using infrastructure as an excuse, WattEV seems uninterested in allowing them to continue to use that excuse.

Like WattEV’s other chargers, this one will be publicly available either via membership or scanning a credit card/QR code at the site. It’s near an industrial park in Bakersfield with several distribution centers and near the 99 freeway, which services the California central valley. WattEV also offers a “truck-as-a-service” model, wherein the company offers electric trucking at a set price with lower startup costs.

The charger could be of use for those distribution centers, bringing goods in from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and also for traffic in the valley, as there are many local farming facilities and produce delivery services (for example, OK Produce in Fresno, which has committed to full zero emission operations).

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