The hidden costs of renewable energy infrastructure: A path to sustainable transformation through circularity

The production and deployment of technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines and batteries demand substantial resources and can generate significant waste. The extraction of rare earth metals, essential to these technologies, often results in habitat destruction, soil and water contamination, and increased carbon emissions. The manufacturing processes for solar panels and wind turbines are no less problematic, involving hazardous chemicals and producing considerable industrial waste.

The end-of-life phase of renewable energy infrastructure also presents a challenge. Solar panels, wind-turbine blades, and batteries have limited lifespans, and their disposal can lead to large volumes of electronic waste. This waste frequently contains toxic materials that can leach into the environment if not properly managed, posing risks to human health and ecosystems. With current recycling rates for these components remaining low, the waste problem is exacerbated.

As renewable energy is crucial for a sustainable future, it is imperative to address these environmental drawbacks. By improving resource extraction methods, enhancing manufacturing processes, and increasing reuse and recycling rates, we can mitigate the hidden costs of our green ambitions and unlock new business opportunities.

To tackle the environmental challenges posed by renewable-energy infrastructure, the energy industry must — and is beginning to — adopt circular-economy approaches on a large scale. A circular economy emphasises reducing, reusing and recycling materials, transforming waste into valuable resources. By integrating circular economy principles and business models into renewable energy technologies, manufacturers can minimise resource use, waste and lifecycle CO2 emissions whilst creating circular supply chains that reduce the need for costly, new resource extraction.

Circular Economy Principles

1. Designing out waste and pollution. 

2. Keeping products and materials in use and at their highest value for as long as possible.

3. Regenerating nature – shifting from extraction to regeneration by  returning biological materials to the earth allowing nature to rebuild soils and increase biodiversity. 

Circular Economy Business Models

• Renewability
  Avoiding waste by using fewer natural resources. Switching to renewable, recovered, or recyclable materials and inputs including energy. 

• Products as a service
  Leasing or renting products instead of buying them, placing responsibility for maintenance, repair, and disposal on the manufacturer. E.g. leasing lighting instead of buying lightbulbs.

• Extending product life
  Designing things to last for as long as possible with second life solutions in mind. Asset renewal and refurbishment instead of building new. Designing for disassembly so products and their constituent parts can easily be placed back on the market.  Adopting circular design principles: Durable, Flexible, Modular, Adaptive, Reusable, Recyclable.

• Sharing platforms
  Peer-to-peer lending and borrowing to get maximum value and use of underutilised assets and products. E.g. AirBNB, Amazon, Zipcar

• Resource recovery
  Capturing materials at their end of life and turning them into new products and energy. E.g. recycling at home, generating renewable energy from food waste.

For instance, modular solar panels can be easily disassembled and upgraded to extend their lifespan and facilitate recycling. In the realm of wind energy, Orsted’s innovative collaboration involves installing new turbine blades made from recycled glass recovered from old blades and establishing cost-efficient material reuse and recycling systems across the supply chain.

By embracing these forward-thinking strategies, the renewable energy sector can significantly mitigate its environmental impact and pave the way for a truly sustainable future.

Expanding the adoption of circular economy practices can also significantly boost environmental and economic outcomes, better distributing social-value benefits to local communities. Companies can collaborate with innovative circular businesses to source sustainable materials locally or invest in advanced techniques and technologies to recover valuable materials from refurbished and decommissioned infrastructure.

Materials reuse and recovery activities at scale can stimulate the market for secondary materials across any region, targeted in areas of high deprivation, creating green-tech jobs, skills and training opportunities. This will create circular supply chains in which one project’s waste becomes another’s resources, helping to optimise resource use and reduce supply risks associated with importing virgin materials from other countries.

We have developed a three-step circular economy roadmap to help you apply its principles to your renewable energy journey. These are the steps:

• Assessing the current state of your renewable energy system

• Identifying opportunities and evaluating their potential

• Implementing and refining projects and analysing results

By embracing circular economy principles and business models at scale, we can pave the way for a more sustainable and equitable future.