U.S. DOE awards $3.6 million in final phase of wind turbine recycling project

On. Sept. 19, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE, Washington, D.C., U.S.) has announced the six final winners of the Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize. Each team was awarded $500,000 in cash prizes, as well as $100,000 in vouchers to work with DOE national laboratories, for creating cost-effective recycling technologies that will increase the sustainability of U.S. wind energy systems.

The combined $3.6 million will expand domestic capabilities for the recycling and recovery of wind materials as teams use their winnings to bring their technologies closer to commercialization. This prize, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and part of DOE’s American-Made Challenges program, provides environmental benefits, supports domestic supply chains and reduces dependence on foreign sources of these materials.

“Wind energy is expanding rapidly across the U.S. and now is the time to be planning for the complete life cycle of wind turbine materials,” says Jeff Marootian, principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at DOE. “The winners of this prize, and their innovative recycling technologies, prove that we can decommission turbines in a manner that is sustainable, economical and advances our vision for building a comprehensive domestic recycling ecosystem.”

In January, 20 teams were selected as winners of the first phase of the prize, Initiate!, and awarded $75,000 each for their wind material recycling concepts that focused on economic and environmental sustainability. These teams have since been competing in the final Accelerate! phase, where they’ve worked to further develop their concepts, perform prototype demonstrations of their technologies and submit a plan to demonstrate the technology at full scale.

As wind energy deployment in the U.S. continues to accelerate, enhancing recycling has been a key piece of DOE’s ongoing efforts to create a circular economy for wind energy. A critical component of this work, according to the DOE, is addressing the 10–15% of a wind turbine’s mass that cannot currently be commercially recycled. This prize incentivized the development of novel recycling solutions for these difficult-to-recycle materials — such as carbon fiber or fiberglass composites and rare earth elements — and supports the commercialization of these technologies to help grow the U.S. wind energy industry.

The Accelerate! phase submissions showcased the wide range of technology that can contribute to a sustainable wind energy ecosystem in the U.S., from solutions for recovering rare earth elements from used wind turbine magnets to technologies that transform the fiber-reinforced composites in turbine blades into usable materials for other applications. The six winning teams, who hail from five states, demonstrated that their prototypes have potential as full-scale technologies:

Second phase winners are:

• Cimentaire (Houston, Texas)
• Critical Materials Recycling (Boone, Iowa)
• Fletcher Team (Huntington, West Virginia)
• GreenTex Solutions LLC (Charleston, South Carolina)
• United Standard Materials Corp. (Houston, Texas)
• WIND REWIND (Orono, Maine).

The winning teams can use their $500,000 cash award and technical support vouchers to advance their prototypes toward relevant scale demonstration and validation. While Accelerate! is the final competition phase of the Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize, a Pitch Day event is planned for 2025, at which participants will have the opportunity to present work completed since the close of the prize and demonstrate the commercial potential of their technologies.

Follow the Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize on HeroX, the official competition platform, to learn more about the winning submissions in the coming months and receive updates about Pitch Day.

The Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize is funded by DOE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office. It is part of DOE’s American-Made Challenges program and is administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.