Wind power is booming in Europe, and so is a tricky question: what to do with the turbines that eventually come down.

Europe installed 8.8 gigawatts of new wind capacity in the first half of 2026, a 30 percent jump year on year, according to WindEurope. The industry nonprofit says that is enough electricity to power about seven million European households and replace fossil fuel imports equivalent to 25 LNG tankers a year.

But while up to 90 percent of a wind turbine’s mass is made of recyclable materials such as steel, copper, aluminium and concrete, the composite materials used in most blades are much harder to deal with.

“Separating the composite materials from the resin requires specialised processes, often involving high temperatures or other energy-intensive treatment methods,” Eva Julius-Philipp, director of environment and sustainability of business area wind at Vattenfall, told Euronews Earth.

“In some cases, these processes can affect the quality and value of the recovered materials, making large-scale recycling more challenging.”

Since Vattenfall introduced a landfill ban on blades, nacelle covers and nose cones in 2021, the company has tested other uses for retired turbine parts.

One example turned a wind turbine nacelle cover into a compact living space. Vattenfall worked with design studio Superuse to repurpose the cover, which once sat atop an Austrian wind tower, into a tiny house measuring 4 metres wide, 10 metres long and 3 metres high. It now includes a kitchen, bathroom and living space, plus a heat pump, solar panels and a solar water heater.

The project was shown at Dutch Design Week in 2024 as part of an initiative looking at how materials could be reused with as little energy and emissions-intensive processing as possible.

Old blades are also being used in buildings. After being decommissioned in 2023, 57 blades from the Danish onshore wind farm Nørre Økse Sø were reused as a facade for a multistorey car park in Lund.

Other retired blades have been used for solar panel frames and alpine skis.

“Projects such as the Tiny House, blade-based building projects and recycled skis are not yet a large-scale solution, however they are intended to help us gain experience, develop new applications and stimulate the market for circular solutions,” Julius-Philipp said.

She said reuse and refurbishment are the preferred option, as long as it is safe to extend the operating life of existing components.

Blades can be between 50 and 100 metres long and are built to spin in harsh weather for up to 25 years. Their layered mix of glass fibre, carbon fibre, epoxy resin, balsa wood, metals and fillers is what makes them durable, and what makes them difficult to recycle.

Vattenfall says it is aiming for 100 percent circularity for these composite materials by 2030 and is working on ways to reuse, repurpose, refurbish and recycle blades.

“When composite materials cannot be recycled at a high value, they can be processed through energy recovery and/or cement co-processing,” Julius-Philipp said.

The company currently uses mechanical recycling to turn blade material into composite flakes or fillers for new products. It also uses pyrolysis, a thermal recycling process, to recover fibres and other secondary materials.

Julius-Philipp said supply is another problem.

“Decommissioned blades do not become available in a steady and predictable flow, which makes it harder for recycling solutions to scale economically,” she said.

The EU has not enforced a ban on landfilling decommissioned blades. Austria, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands have binding national bans, and WindEurope is pushing for an EU-wide legal ban.

“What is needed now is a regulatory framework that enables circular value chains and secondary raw materials to scale,” Julius-Philipp said.

Some manufacturers are also changing the way blades are made. Siemens Gamesa’s RecyclableBlades, used at Vattenfall’s offshore wind farm Hollandse Kust Zuid in the Netherlands, use a resin that dissolves in a low-temperature, mildly acidic solution. That separates the resin from fiberglass, carbon fiber, plastic, wood and metal without significantly affecting their properties.

“While recyclable blades are not yet widely adopted, we see growing emphasis on developing technologies that enable more efficient blade recycling and help retain the value and quality of the recovered materials,” Julius-Philipp said.

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