Making progress on a key onshore wind industry challenge

This week we announced an agreement with Veolia to recycle wind turbine blades in the US, demonstrating meaningful progress on one of the most important sustainability challenges for our industry.

We are excited about the potential of this approach--both because it can be scaled and because the recycled blades will be used to produce a more environmentally sustainable form of cement. Cement is the source of about 8% of the world's CO2 emissions, so any improvement has the potential for significant impact.

Veolia will take blades that have been removed from turbines and shred them at a processing facility in Missouri. They will then be used as a replacement for coal, sand and clay at cement manufacturing facilities across the US. That’s good news since on average, nearly 90% of the blade material, by weight, will be reused as a repurposed engineered material for cement production … a great example of how the circular economy can drive sustainability progress.

Today’s announcement also aligns well with our broader sustainability efforts within GE Renewable Energy. We believe it is important to design for sustainability in all of our products – not just wind turbine blades. Our work ranges from rethinking the fundamental product design to a focus on product life extension more generally.

But that’s not all we’re doing in the sustainability arena. Last year, we committed to be carbon neutral by the end of 2020. Our employees have really embraced the program, and we’ve made strides in improving energy efficiency, eliminating waste and optimizing logistics along with using renewable energy to power our own facilities.

This latest news is just one more example of how -- together with our customers – the employees of GE Renewable Energy are working to ensure that no one ever has to choose between affordable, reliable or sustainable energy.