Europe’s first circular wind farm
In a landmark step toward solving the blade waste challenge, multinational power company Endesa and Holcim have successfully demonstrated a full-scale circular solution at the Aldeavieja wind farm in Ávila, Spain.
As part of the facility’s repowering project, 22 aging turbines were dismantled and replaced by four modern ones, increasing capacity from 14.5 MW to 24 MW. Instead of discarding the old blades, the team reused them, incorporating recycled fibers from the blades into ECOPact concrete for the site’s new turbine foundations using Holcim’s circular technology, ECOCycle®.
This marks the first time in Europe that decommissioned wind blades have been used in new wind farm infrastructure.
“Aldeavieja is now the first wind farm in Europe to complete its own lifecycle by using structural waste for repowering,” says Pilar Lara, Project Manager in charge of Engineering and Construction Projects at Endesa.