Bullets:
China’s vast wind industry generates more electricity than the next nine countries combined.
But many of the first-generation turbines are at the end of their useful lives, and are being replaced by larger, taller towers.
That leads to a major disposal problem, with tens of thousands of turbines and blades totaling millions of tons which typically would be buried in landfills, or incinerated.
But engineers in Gansu are refurbishing old units, swapping old components with new, and redeploying them to remote areas with localized power demand.
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Report:
Good morning.
During last year—2025—wind and solar generated more power than coal across the world. The adoption of these clean energy technologies is driven by plunging costs.
Sixteen years was not that long ago, when the unsubsidized costs of solar and wind power were far above nuclear, coal, and natural gas. And it was those collapsing production costs that enables China to produce more electricity today than most of the rest of the world, combined:
In 2023, China had more installed wind power capacity than the next nine countries.
Then in 2024, Chinese firms added 18% more wind capacity, and all of China’s new power demand would henceforth be met by renewables. And last year, 2025, China added another 119 gigawatts of wind power. That breaks out to 17,000 new wind turbines installed, or two turbines every hour.
The Chinese, then, have deep investments in wind, and so are also invested in solving this problem: what happens when the turbines wear out, and need to be replaced? How should they be taken down, and safely recycled or disposed of? The blades are a particular challenge, and they are commonly hauled off to landfills, or are incinerated.
This photo is from 2019, and immediately went viral in the United States, and the industry was criticized for pushing green technologies that may not be so green after all.
Blade waste in just the United States will be over 2 million tons by 2050, and we can do the math from before and assume most of those 43 million total tons worldwide will be coming down from Chinese solar farms. There are a handful of Western companies who are experimenting with recycling the blades into other marketable products, but they’re not able to do so at scale, not yet nearly fast enough to make use of all the blades that are hitting the landfills.
And the newest-generation wind turbines are much larger and taller than previous models, and those photos look bad enough, just for the older blades.
The problem is confounding to physicists and materials scientists, who admit “there is no good way to recycle” these materials. And there’s no way to melt them down and make them into anything else that’s useful, so far. So for the foreseeable future the most economical way to dispose of them is to bury them. The US Department of Energy has funded research and grants, to encourage companies to figure something out.
A group in China is taking a different approach, by refurbishing the turbines that are worn out and would otherwise be incinerated. Gansu is home to enormous wind farms that go out to forever, and the first-generation systems are now at the end of their useful lives.
That is more than 30,000 turbines, nationwide that today produce about 45 gigawatts of power. But it’s also a million tons of waste that will either go into the ground or up a chimney.
These engineers in Gansu figure that if the turbines can be remanufactured, that would deepen further China’s dominance of the wind power industry, and serve as a true circular economy model for wind.
Twenty-five turbines with over 15 years of production are being repaired, with new components installed to improve their performance. The result was that the core parts were roughly comparable to new gear, and the turbines can be set up in new locations with localized power demand.
Be Good.
Resources and links:
A Year of Clean Energy Milestones
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/2025-energy-review
China’s solar, wind power installations soared to record in 2024
China added record wind and solar power in 2025, data shows
https://www.courthousenews.com/china-added-record-wind-and-solar-power-in-2025-data-shows/
What President Trump Gets Wrong And Right About Wind Farms
https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicasanders/2025/07/31/what-president-trump-gets-wrong-and-right-about-wind-farms/
Wind energy has a massive waste problem. New technologies may be a step closer to solving it
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/28/world/wind-turbine-recycling-climate-intl
Can wind turbines be recycled?
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/can-wind-turbines-be-recycled
Unfurling The Waste Problem Caused By Wind Energy
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy
America Can Recycle 90% of Wind Turbine Mass, According to New DOE Report
https://www.energy.gov/cmei/wind/articles/america-can-recycle-90-wind-turbine-mass-according-new-doe-report
In China first, project breathes new life into ageing wind turbines
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3364771/china-first-project-breathes-new-life-ageing-wind-turbines
Top 10 countries with the most electricity generation in 2023
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202408/1318729.shtml
China puts world’s first 100-kW bamboo-built solar platform to offshore test
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/china-100kw-bamboo-floating-solar-platform-offshore
Top 10 countries with the most installed wind power capacity
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202407/1316637.shtml
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