Steering Sustainable End-of-Life Treatment of Glass and Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics Waste from Rotor Blades of Wind Power Plants

In the European Union, recycling quotas are the measure of choice to regulate the end-of-life treatment of waste. In addition to accomplishing the circularity of resources, it is implicitly assumed that the environmentally most favored recycling system will be established. However, in dependence of the waste material as well as the local treatment and infrastructural conditions, the impacts of political regulations on the total system differ in terms of the environmental as well as economic outcomes. Against this background, we analyze the impact of political regulations on the economic and environmental burden of the necessary treatment infrastructure for end-of-life glass and carbon fiber reinforced plastic waste. We first conduct Lifecycle Impact Assessments to quantify the environmental impact of several end-of-life treatment paths. In addition, we developed a decision support tool based on mathematical optimization to systematically analyze the impact of political regulations on the design of the required treatment infrastructures. Herein, we focus on economic and environmental objectives to demonstrate the trade-off between the two evaluation criteria. We apply our methodological approach to a case study on end-of-life glass and carbon fiber reinforced plastic waste from rotor blades of wind power plants in the European Union. We found that up to a certain degree (<60%) recycling quotas lead to the desired environmental benefit in exchange for higher costs. However, when recycling quotas above 60% are demanded the effect is reversed. In addition, we found that the impact of setting recycling quotas differs in dependence of the material.