Note: This work was undertaken when Below280 operated as the LCA division of Decerna Group
The End-of-Life Problem with Wind Turbine Blades
Offshore wind is essential to net zero, but the industry has an unresolved materials problem. Manufacturers build current wind turbine blades from epoxy-based composites. These are durable, lightweight and structurally effective, but almost impossible to recycle at end of life.As the first generation of large offshore wind farms approaches decommissioning, end-of-life blade waste heading to landfill is becoming a serious concern for the sector.
Solving it requires more than finding a recyclable blade material. Any replacement needs to perform across the full lifecycle, not just at end of life. A wind turbine blade material that reduces landfill waste but carries higher manufacturing emissions, or degrades faster in service, may not represent a real environmental improvement. That question requires life cycle assessment to answer properly.
The Brief
ORE Catapult, the UK’s leading research, development and testing organisation for offshore wind, commissioned Below280 to conduct a comparative materials LCA. The study covered four alternative wind turbine blade materials under development.
The Approach
Below280 built five comparative wind turbine blade LCA models in openLCA using the Ecoinvent database, following ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. These covered one existing epoxy baseline and one model for each of the four candidate materials. Each model covered the full lifecycle of a blade option, from raw material extraction through manufacturing, service life and end-of-life treatment.
Each model included environmental hotspot analysis, sensitivity analysis and pedigree matrix-based uncertainty analysis. Together, these identified where impacts concentrated, tested key assumptions, and made data reliability explicit. Below280 included suggested options for reducing impacts alongside each result.
The comparative structure was deliberate. A single-material LCA tells you what a technology’s impacts are. A five-way comparison tells you which direction is worth pursuing.
Results
One of the four candidate recyclable blade materials showed a clear environmental advantage across the assessment. The results gave ORE Catapult a ranked view of the options and the impact data to understand why. This informed decisions about where to focus subsequent R&D effort into sustainable wind turbine blade design.
The results are confidential to ORE Catapult.
Why Composite Materials LCA Matters for Offshore Wind
End-of-life wind turbine blade waste is one of the more visible sustainability challenges facing the offshore wind sector, and it is attracting increasing scrutiny from regulators, investors and the public. The composite materials decisions R&D programmes make now will determine whether the next generation of blades has a credible end-of-life story.
Life cycle assessment is the tool that makes those decisions evidence-based. Without it, material selection risks optimising for one part of the lifecycle while creating problems elsewhere. A recyclable wind turbine blade that performs poorly on manufacturing emissions or service life is not a solution — it is a trade-off that only an LCA makes visible.
About Below280
Below280 is a specialist LCA, EPD and carbon due diligence consultancy. We conduct ISO 14040/44-compliant life cycle assessments for renewable energy technologies, sustainable materials and low-carbon energy systems, including comparative materials LCA for R&D programmes and independent verification of environmental claims for investors, developers and regulators.
Need LCA, EPD, or CBAM consultancy or training?
Or have a research proposal to collaborate on?
Global commercial consultancy • Horizon Europe, UKRI & Innovate UK research partner.
Specialists in openLCA, and UK openLCA partner for GreenDelta.