Report: how to facilitate the wind industry to become circular
February 9, 2022

The wind industry has proven its capabilities in accelerating innovations to provide economically viable and sustainable energy on large scale. However, the resources of our planet are limited and therefore, we are forced to apply circular strategies. The stakeholders of the wind industry are now committed to increasing the circularity and sustainability of wind farms. Not only at the End-of-Life (EoL) stage of wind farms, but already starting from at the design phase. This all has been brought together in our report “How to facilitate wind industry to become Circular”.

During the Moonshot project in 2020 stakeholders across the value chain were first gathered to evaluate the most important topics to be considered when increasing circularity and sustainability. This first phase has focused on identifying the challenges that come with the transition from a linear to a circular wind industry. The outcome of the Moonshot project was 9 action agendas which the stakeholders recommended to be further developed in Phase 2 in 2021.

In 2021 the Circular Wind Hub (Phase 2) acted through 3 different working groups, so-called “hubs”, where the 9 action agendas from Moonshot project were used as starting point. The working groups were:

• Policy Hub (PH)
• Knowledge Hub (KH)
• Industry Hub (IH)

It can be acknowledged that regulations have a major role in either hindering or stimulating transitions. Therefore, this report highlights the outcomes of the Policy Hub as the objective of the Policy Hub was to recognize the needs in policy change, which would increase the circularity and sustainability of the whole industry according to its industrial stakeholders.

The objective of the Knowledge Hub was to provide information about current knowledge gaps and thereby provide suggestions for further research objectives, which would support the implementation of policy changes. And the Industry Hub was established to build collaborations between industrial partners with the target to initiate demonstration projects.

A total of almost 200 stakeholders across the value chain worked together to meet the Circular Wind Hub targets!