Recycling: The Hidden Challenge of Renewable Energy
HOW TO DRIVE THE SHIFT TO A CLEAN, SUSTAINABLE, AND CIRCULAR ENERGY SYSTEM BY 2050?
The transition to renewable energy is accelerating, mainly driven by the extension of cheap but proven energy sources from wind turbines, solar panels, and battery storage replacing fossil fuels at an unprecedented pace. By 2050, Europe will need around 53 billion solar panels and 580,000 wind turbines to meet its climate goals. Also new technologies, including Green Molecules and exhaust heat recovery, will be very relevant in this transformation. However, a critical aspect of sustainability is often overlooked: What happens when these energy solutions reach the end of their lifespan?
While renewable energy significantly reduces carbon emissions, it also generates enormous amounts of waste. Solar panels, wind turbine blades, and lithium-ion batteries contain valuable materials that could be recovered—but current recycling methods are inefficient and expensive. Without action, the clean energy revolution may create a massive waste problem in the coming decades.
This article will be interesting for you if you:
- Want to understand the waste challenge behind renewable energy.
- Are curious about innovative recycling technologies that could solve this issue.
- Want to know how startups can help make renewables truly circular.
♻️ The Recycling Challenge: What Happens at End of Life?
The lifespan of renewable energy infrastructure varies. Solar panels last up to 25 to 30 years, wind turbines around 20-25 years, and batteries typically 10-15 years, depending on usage (source). By 2050, global solar panel waste is projected to reach 78 million tons, with Europe as a major contributor (source). Meanwhile, wind turbine blades generate 20,000 tons of waste per year in Germany alone, a figure that could rise to 50,000 tons annually by 2030 (source). The sheer volume of valuable waste makes advanced recycling solutions essential to recovering valuable raw materials, reducing CO₂ emissions, and strengthening regional supply chain independence.
Beyond large-scale wind and solar farms, new disruptive energy technologies are emerging, opening new market opportunities. Flexible organic solar cells can be mounted on building facades, while advanced materials like perovskites are enabling record-breaking efficiency levels in photovoltaics. Energy can also be harvested in unconventional ways, kites generate electricity from wind at high altitudes, ships can harness wind power for propulsion, and waste heat from industrial processes can be converted into electricity.
As the energy landscape becomes more complex, balancing generation and consumption will require additional technologies. Storage solutions, both centralized and decentralized, will be key to absorbing surplus electricity and releasing it when needed. Other innovations will use excess energy to produce Green Molecules like methane, methanol, and hydrogen, which will be crucial for hard-to-electrify industries such as heavy manufacturing and shipping.
However, recycling these materials is not straightforward. The challenges include:
- Technical difficulties: Composite materials, laminated glass, and chemical compositions make separation and recovery difficult.
- Economic barriers: Extracting critical raw materials like silver, lithium, and rare earth elements is expensive compared to sourcing new raw materials.
- Regulatory gaps: While Europe has stricter recycling policies than other regions, enforcement is inconsistent, and clear incentives are lacking.
🌪️ Recycling Wind Turbines: The Blade Dilemma
From 2028, hundreds of offshore wind turbines in Europe will reach the end of their service life every year. The subsequent dismantling of the wind farms poses challenges for the operators. In addition to unanswered questions about legal and technical regulations, scarce resources for specialist ships and service providers mean limited weather windows for construction work and the use of new technical processes means risks that are difficult to calculate (source).
Most of a wind turbine’s structure, up to 85-90 %, can be recycled since it consists mainly of steel and metals. However, the turbine blades pose a major disposal challenge. Germany alone produces 20,000 tons of waste from wind turbine blades each year, and this figure could rise to 50,000 tons annually by 2030 (source). As they are often made from complex composite materials, primarily glass- or carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (GFRP and CFRP) it is very complex to recycle them. 60-70 % of the blade is made up of fibers and 30-40 % is resin to combine high-tensile fibers. GFRP waste is mainly shreddered and then used in the cement industry as alternative fuel and raw material. Standard CFRP recycling processes can be divided into physical, thermochemical and chemical recycling. The processes differ a lot regarding required input energy and output quality of the upcycled process stream (source). The goal is to receive long carbon fibers with virgin-grade properties to achieve high market value material. Pyrolysis as the most mature thermochemical recycling process is energy-intense, so the research is conducted on lower energy processes like microwave pyrolysis or fluidized beds.
One would expect the wind turbine OEMs like Siemens Gamesa, Nordex or Vestas to focus on that topic as well, but you find only few approaches. Examples are Siemens’ Recycleable Blade using a new resin or Vestas’ new chemical process but there seems to be limited rollout (source).
Several startups and tech companies are working on solutions: Aerocircular, Carbon Cleanup, Carbon Rivers, Continuum, Extracthive, Mitsubishi Chemical Advanced Materials, Neocomp (Nehlsen), Shocker Composites, and Vartega. Still, large-scale adoption remains limited, mainly due to high costs and regulatory uncertainty.
🌞 Recycling Solar Panels: Recovering Critical Materials
In 2021, the total installed quantity of PV modules in Germany was already around five million tons, with a silicon content of 150,000 tons (source). By 2029, Europe will experience its first major wave of solar panel waste from installations made two decades earlier (source). By 2050, an estimated 78 million tons of solar PV waste will be generated globally. Solar modules are classified as electronic waste and must be recycled. Although recycling the aluminum frames (10-15% by weight) and the cover glass (70-75% by weight) achieves the legally prescribed quota, it is not a satisfactory solution in terms of sustainability and resource conservation. A further 10 to 20 % is made up of metals such as copper, silver (solder connections) or aluminum (frames) and plastics. The actual core of a module, the semiconductor, accounts for only a small proportion: around 2 % of the total weight of silicon-based elements and even less for non-silicon-based elements (source).
Not only metal, but also glass can be reused, for example as glass in insulating materials for the construction industry. Plastic on the other hand, is a low-grade material. It is not recycled because reprocessing is not profitable. Instead, it is used in waste incineration plants to produce electricity and heat or is used as a substitute in the cement industry. Rare earth metals are not recycled either – recycling is more expensive than mining new deposits.
Although step-by-step delamination and dismantling of end-of-life modules is possible, it is very time-consuming and cost-intensive and therefore hardly suitable for industrial scale (source). Therefore, today’s recycling methods, mainly mechanical shredding, fail to recover key materials like silver, silicon, and rare earth metals due to the EVA-laminated glass used in the modules. These are incinerated together with the plastic film. One of the major challenges is that there are many different module types and sizes installed, but the recycling processes should be as universally applicable as possible. New recycling methods can recover more than 95% of the materials used in solar cells, including critical raw materials, while significantly reducing CO2 emissions compared to raw materials from mines.
Tech companies pioneering in efficient solar recycling include Solar Materials, Rosie, Flaxres, LuxChemTech, 9Tech, Reiling, and Saperatec.
🔋 Recycling Batteries: The Circular Economy Opportunity
With 240,000 tons of mined lithium for producing around nearly 1TWh batteries globally each year (source), trend strongly rising, two key strategies can help reduce the demand for newly mined raw materials: re-use and recycling.
Re-use: Batteries that are no longer suitable for their original purpose, mainly after several years in electric vehicles due to degradation, can be repurposed for stationary energy storage in grids or buildings. This can double their lifespan to up to 20 years, reducing waste and conserving resources.
Recycling: Once batteries reach their end of life, also after re-use, they must be properly recycled. In 2023, around 10,000 tons, which means 5 GWh, of batteries and production scrap were recycled in Europe. By 2040, nearly 6,000,000 tons of end-of-life batteries will drive the market, while the demand for new batteries is still growing (source).
Recycling lithium-ion batteries reduces reliance on virgin materials such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel, while strengthening Europe’s supply chain resilience. The process is multi-stage and now mandated under EU regulations (source), which impose strict material recovery quotas—for example, lithium recovery rates must reach 50 % by 2027 and 80 % by 2031 (source).
Conventional methods are no longer sufficient. To meet regulatory demands, hydrometallurgical and direct recycling techniques are replacing common thermal processes, cutting CO₂ emissions by up to 70% while recovering significant amounts of critical raw materials. In 2035, recycled material could account for up to 30 % of the raw materials (Lithium, Nickel, and Cobalt) required to produce new battery cells. With a clear technological pathway and established supply chains, costs are expected to scale down by up to 50 %.
Beyond regulations, industry demand for sustainable battery recycling is growing rapidly. Our portfolio company cylib is at the forefront of green battery recycling, and several emerging startups and tech companies like tozero, Redwood Materials, mecaware, Li-Cycle, Umicore, atlilium, and Voltfang are working towards a more resilient European battery value chain.
🚀Overview of Emerging Renewable Energy Recycling Innovators
The landscape of startups and tech companies working on renewable energy recycling is expanding quickly. As demand for sustainable solutions grows, we are seeing a wave of innovation—and increasingly, collaboration and consolidation. Below is a selection of pioneering companies shaping the future of solar, battery, and wind turbine recycling:
The Renewable Energy Recycling Landscape © Illustration by DTCF
💡Conclusion: The Future of Renewable Recycling
Despite promising innovations, recycling renewable energy materials is not yet happening at scale. To achieve a fully circular energy economy, we need:
✔️ Stronger policies – Stricter recycling mandates and incentives for circular design.
✔️ Investment in infrastructure – Scaling up recycling facilities across Europe.
✔️ Industry responsibility – OEMs like Siemens Gamesa and Vestas need to integrate recycling into their production models.
For renewable energy to be truly sustainable, we must address the recycling challenge now. Innovative startups, forward-thinking policies, and industry collaboration will be key to closing the loop and making clean energy fully circular.
_____________________________________
The DeepTech & Climate Fund (DTCF) is committed to supporting startups tackling these challenges. With up to €1 billion in funds, we are investing in solutions that will ensure renewables remain a sustainable energy source for generations to come. If you’re working on innovative recycling technologies, we’d love to hear from you!
👉 This article was written by Tobias Weissgerber.