Sustainable end-of-life value chain scenarios for wind turbine blades

Abstract This study presents a sustainable end-of-life (EoL) value chain scenario assessment framework for decommissioned wind turbine blades (WTBs) to address the challenge of increased volumes of WTBs reaching their EoL. Findings from the previous studies highlight that WTBs EoL scenarios and their upscaling are yet to be addressed environmentally and economically. The scenarios investigated herein are mechanical shredding, pyrolysis, and cement co-processing that can be industrially upscaled. Together with the industrial partners, end-of-life scenario value chains are identified, to assess their sustainability through material flow analysis (MFA), life cycle assessment (LCA), and techno-economic assessment (TEA). A prospective consequential LCA model is proposed for scenarios with different technology readiness levels (TRL) expected to be commercialized at different timeframes. IPCC’s Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) will be used to describe foreground and background systems in 2030, 2040, and 2050. More specifically, SSP1 (i.e., green road), SSP2 (i.e., middle road), and SSP5 (i.e., fossil-fueled development) will be employed and quantified based on integrated assessment models (IAM). Furthermore, environmental impacts, economic criteria, Social sustainability, and circularity cannot directly be compared to evaluate the scenarios. Thus, this research proposes multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method to evaluate the three end-of-life scenario value chains considering a prospective scheme and addressing the key challenges related to the assessment of emerging technologies. Furthermore, a full conceptual framework of the methodology is presented.