“Look north from a crest of the Logan County landfill and the wind turbines on the horizon appear like tiny pinwheels slicing bitter February gusts into a renewable and ever-larger share of Colorado’s electric power.
Now gaze downward, into the chasm gradually filling with a combination of loose dirt, garbage and plastic bags — lots of plastic bags — and prepare to see another perspective: the hulking remnants of a discarded turbine blade.
As thousands of the blades outlive their useful life and give way to new, and often larger and more efficient replacements, the pristine twirling arms of the clean-energy economy smack headlong into the reality that nearly all the used-up blades end up buried in a landfill. As the soldiers forming perhaps the most visible front lines of the clean-energy wars, the aged-out behemoths pose not only an issue of disposal, but of image.”
read the entire article
Simpson, Kevin. Colorado Sun 26 February 2020.