Are wind turbine blades buried at the end of their lifespan?

After dismantling, the blades are given a second life. Some are refurbished and reused at other ENGIE sites or sold to third parties as part of repowering projects, while others are given more creative new purposes: bus shelters, pedestrian bridges, playgrounds, bicycle shelters, or noise barriers.

For blades that cannot be directly reused, industrial solutions exist, such as mechanical or thermal recycling. The most widely used method is cement co-processing, in which the shredded blades serve both as fuel and as a raw material in cement production.

And that’s not all. Innovative projects are exploring recyclable resins to reintegrate materials into new turbines, with the aim of producing fully recyclable blades. This is a real challenge that our teams at the Laborelec research center are actively working on. A concrete example is the ZEBRA project (Zero wastE Blade ReseArch), which uses a recyclable thermoplastic resin.

Since 2025, ENGIE has also been a signatory to the WindEurope initiative banning the landfilling of decommissioned wind turbine blades.

To make these initiatives tangible: between 2015 and 2023, the 81 blades dismantled at ENGIE sites in Belgium were either recycled or resold for reuse — proof that wind energy can be both high-performing and circular.