A Swedish Company is Turning Wind Turbines into Skis

Since the early 2000s. Swedish electricity company Vattenfall has built and operated thousands of wind turbines across northern Europe. Each year, thousands are decommissioned and torn down. Now, instead of simply throwing the materials out, Vattenfall is finding ways to give them new life.

In collaboration with Norwegian recycling company Gjenkraft and ski company Evi Ski, Vattenfall is turning rotor blades from decommissioned wind turbines into skis. With valuable carbon fiber built into each rotor blade, industrial designer and Evi Ski founder Endre Hals is building his skis stronger with sustainability in mind.

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When Hals founded Evi Ski in 2003, he wanted to make a strong ski that wouldn’t need to be thrown away when it was damaged. He began designing skis so that certain sections could be reinforced with new material to make the skis stronger and extend their life on the snow. But if he wanted to design his skis with recycled materials, he needed a source.

In 2022, Vattenfall had to dismantle the massive Irene Vorrink wind farm in the Netherlands. The contractor was ready to incinerate the materials. Thousands of other turbine rotor blades across Europe were approaching the end of their lifecycle and were soon to be thrown away. Vattenfall was in the midst of improving its sustainability initiatives, which included a ban on landfilling waste. To prevent the incineration and dumping of its turbine materials, Vattenfall looked into all the possibilities and available options for the materials, eventually landing on Gjenkraft.

Gjenkraft had developed a method to recycle a range of materials, including the complex carbon composite structures found in the turbine’s rotor blades. Using a self-developed, multi-step thermochemical process, Gjenkraft recovers glass and carbon fibers as well as hydrocarbons in the form of gas and oil. It soon reached out to Evi Ski and Hals with an idea for the recovered carbon fiber.

“Our solution focuses on recycling composites to extract valuable materials, like glass and carbon fibre, from decommissioned wind turbine blades,” Gjenkraft co-owner Marcin Rusin said in a Vattenfall release. “We collaborate with visionary partners like Endre from Evi Ski to showcase the potential of recycled materials.”

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In his workshop in the Norwegian alpine area of Lønset, Hals takes the long recycled carbon fiber strands and puts them on top of the wooden cores of his skis. Inside the ski, carbon fiber acts as a strong, ultra-lightweight reinforcement laminate. It reduces the weight of the ski while increasing its stiffness, giving skis a poppy rebound when loaded up. With the recycled strands often coming in long lengths, putting them in skis seemed to be the perfect application.

“This might be the best use we can find for these fibers,” Hals said. “We want to use these long fibers from wind turbine blades to create something else that’s long—like skis. And after that, we can use them for something shorter.”

In addition to skis, Vattenfall is also involved in projects to construct cabins and parking facilities using parts from decommissioned wind turbines. Since 2021, Vattenfall has had a landfill ban on turbine blades from decommissioned wind farms.

“Even though several recycling solutions are approaching industrialisation, we need these innovative examples to show what’s actually possible,” Vattenfall Senior Environment and Sustainability specialist Gustav Frid said. “There’s enormous potential for creativity and new applications for the composite materials found primarily in blades, but also in other parts of a wind turbine.”

Hals’ commitment to using sustainable materials for his skis is becoming popular in the skiing industry. Massive ski and snowboard companies like CAPiTA and Rossignol have made recycled materials the standard, and other companies across the industry are beginning to follow suit. As sustainability continues to become a main focus in the ski industry, skiers and snowboarders are seeing their favorite brands become more innovative every year. With massive power companies like Vattenfall helping leading the charge, ski and snowboard manufacturing could eventually become 100% circular.