Denmark-based company Continuum plans to make all wind turbine blades fully recyclable and stop landfilling and their emissions-intensive processing into cement with six industrial-scale recycling factories across Europe, backed by investment from the Danish venture capital firm Climentum Capital and a grant from the UK’s Offshore Wind Growth Partnership (OWGP).
Continuum, which is already present in Denmark and the UK, plans to build six factories, the first of which will be in Esbjerg and is expected to be operational by the end of 2024, followed by a second factory in the UK. The company says it will be able to start taking end-of-life blades by the end of 2023.
After the first two factories, Continuum plans to build four more by 2030 in France, Germany, Spain, and Turkey. Each factory will have the capacity to recycle a minimum of 36,000 tonnes of end-of-life turbine blades per year and will be designed to be powered only by 100 per cent green energy, with zero carbon emitting environments.
Continuum says its goal is to abandon landfilling and drastically reduce CO2 that is currently being emitted during incineration and co-processing in cement factories by 100 million tons by 2050 through state-of-the-art mechanical composite recycling technology and industrial scale factories.