Waste management concept for wind farms and wind turbines
Waste management concept for wind farms: practical, traceable and designed for the entire life cycle of your wind turbines.
Do you need a waste management concept for your wind energy project? We develop concepts that consider the entire life cycle of the turbines: from construction and operational waste to recycling and environmentally sound disposal of components. This gives authorities and experts a traceable document, and you create sustainable solutions that minimise environmental impact in all project phases.
In Austria, the Waste Management Act 2002 (Abfallwirtschaftsgesetz 2002) provides the framework, above all with the waste hierarchy: the waste hierarchy gives priority to avoidance, followed by preparation for reuse, recycling, other recovery and disposal. The Landfill Ordinance, the Waste Catalogue Ordinance and the Recycled Construction Materials Ordinance also play a role. The construction phase mainly generates excavated soil, clearing timber, demolition concrete and hazardous and non-hazardous waste. Excavated soil should be recovered on site where possible, and its quality is characterised in advance. Recovery of clearing timber on the site comes into consideration only if it is technically suitable and permissible under the relevant permits. In operation, service and maintenance produce oils, greases and gear oil, which authorised disposal contractors take over. The type and frequency of documentation depend on the statutory requirements and the project-specific conditions, and in the event of a fire the residues are disposed of in compliance with the law.
Such a concept also describes the storage and segregation concept on the construction site facility areas, handover only to authorised collectors and treatment operators, and ongoing documentation of type, quantity, origin and whereabouts. Demolition concrete is stored in sealed containers, absorbents are kept on hand for oil spills, and contaminated soil must be removed immediately, tested and, according to its classification under waste law, properly recovered or disposed of. In decommissioning, reuse takes precedence over recycling, and disposal follows the rules applicable at the time of decommissioning. Steel from the tower and reinforcement goes into steel production as a secondary raw material, crushed concrete can be used in road construction, and copper and aluminium melt down readily. Depending on the component and the available recovery routes, a large part of a wind turbine's mass can be reused or recovered. Rotor blades consist mainly of glass- and carbon-fibre-reinforced plastics and are today mostly recovered thermally, for example in cement production. Recycling of permanent magnets containing rare earths is so far low. The extent of foundation removal depends on the permit documents and the conditions for the specific decommissioning; for the lower foundation segments in particular, authorities judge differently. Design and permitted operating life are turbine-specific, and the respective permit documents are decisive for decommissioning and repowering; decommissioning is therefore considered early. Generators and gearboxes can be resold as spare parts wherever possible.
We know the requirements of authorities and experts and use modern calculation and analysis methods. Our analyses and reports are independent, fact-based and solution-oriented. More than 40 successfully completed environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures are our experience base. The concept is part of your submission documents. We complement it with EIA expert contributions and the air quality report, because excavation and construction traffic also affect air quality. We accompany the approval procedure from submission to the decision. For the time after operation, expert decommissioning concepts are available.
