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On Wednesday in Denver, we had the pleasure of joining Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. (UC Boulder) and Chris Wright, CEO and Chairman of Liberty Energy for a live discussion as part of Liberty Energy’s “Liberty and Energy” Presentation Series. Roger is a Professor in the Environmental Studies department at the University of Colorado Boulder and the author of “The Honest Broker” substack (linked here). Roger’s work focuses on the intersection of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, innovation, and sports. It was exciting to bring the Denver area community together and have a live, studio audience to discuss the current state of climate, energy and the environment broadly.

To kick off the discussion, Roger walked us through a presentation with key background on the current state of science around energy and climate (slides linked here). We then dove into how the broader population might get better data and discussion around energy and climate, issues with the IPCC’s summary for policy makers, how priorities in the environmental world have shifted to focusing primarily on climate, the impact of climate alarmism on children and young adults, and how Roger approaches teaching his students to appreciate the scale and complexity of energy and electricity in the world. Roger shares examples of the “scenario wars” that are taking place, his experience being investigated by Congress, and the overwhelming need for solid data on climate from a trusted, authoritative organization that allows for open discussion.

We also discuss the role of oil and gas companies in the energy world of tomorrow, the math of getting to net zero 2050, the desperate need for more energy in the developing world, the glaring opportunity for America to help power the world, and conclude with some inside scoop on Roger’s chances of joining the team with Coach Prime. As you will hear, Roger is a great explainer and wonderful thinker. We can’t thank the Liberty team enough for allowing us to be a part of it. The world needs more “Liberty and Energy” town hall gatherings!

As you will hear, Roger very positively mentions a podcast with Michael Liebreich and Jim Skea (the new head) of the IPCC. The episode is linked here.

As we head into the weekend, we wish you well and hope your team wins! If you do get out for a walk or otherwise have some time, we hope very much you can tune in to this Special Edition COBT. We learned a lot!

Across the USA, wind power outfits are being repeatedly busted for dumping their blades and simply cutting and running. Then there are scammers like Global Fiberglass Solutions Inc which makes claims about recycling dumped blades, notwithstanding there is no market for ground up toxic waste, funnily enough.

Principal among the toxic agents to be found in turbine blades is Bisphenol A – a compound banned in numerous countries.

Back in August 2021, Global Fiberglass Solutions Inc was busted for piling up over 1,300 blades at three makeshift dumps in Iowa – despite claiming it would ‘recycle’ them.

It’s a model it has chosen to repeat across the United States, including West Texas where locals are outraged. Stories about recycling blades keep being recycled, while thousands more blades pile up in dumps that resemble ‘green’ energy graveyards.

Russell Gold reports on the American wind industry’s dump and run tactics below.

Thousands of Old Wind Turbine Blades Pile Up in West Texas
Texas Monthly
Russell Gold
24 August 2023

Every year since 1958, the West Texas town of Sweetwater has hosted the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup, which is exactly what it sounds like. Thousands of the venomous ophidians are rooted out of their dens and brought to the Nolan County Coliseum to be gawked at, “milked,” and often beheaded and skinned. It started as a way for the region to rid itself of some of its least-welcome residents. Now community leaders wish they could do the same with several giant piles of scrap that have for too long been left to bake in the sun. But that’s proving to be much trickier than wrangling reptiles.

About forty miles west of Abilene on Interstate 20, Sweetwater has unwittingly become home to what is possibly the world’s largest collection of unwanted wind turbine blades. When forklifts deposited the first of these in a field behind the apartment complex where Pamala Meyer lives, on the west side of town, in 2017, she wasn’t initially bothered. But then the blades—between 150 and 200 feet in length and mostly made of composite materials such as fiberglass with a binding resin—kept coming. Each was cut into thirds, with each segment longer than a school bus. Thousands arrived over several years, eventually blanketing more than thirty acres, in stacks rising as high as basketball backboards. Every few dozen feet, a break among the stacks leads into an industrial hedge maze.

“It’s just a hazard all the way around,” Meyer said. She worries about neighborhood children exploring the unfenced piles and says that stagnant pools of water inside the blades breed swarms of mosquitos. Matt Jackson, who works in a nearby warehouse, has other concerns. The piles create shaded nooks and crannies, perfect for Sweetwater’s unofficial mascot. “It’s just a big rattlesnake farm,” he said.

The blades were brought here by Global Fiberglass Solutions, a company based in Washington State that announced in 2017 its intention to recycle blades from wind farms across the region. Instead of ending up in landfills, they would be ground up into a reusable material that could be turned into pallets, railroad ties, or flooring panels. Global Fiberglass is one of a few companies attempting to develop a viable business from the impossible task of recycling blades.

Besides the main boneyard—behind Meyer’s apartment—stacks of blades also occupy ten acres a couple miles south of town, and the company is storing blades in other locations in the county. “They have, in my view, abandoned them there,” said Samantha Morrow, the Nolan County attorney. “The county doesn’t have and cannot find millions of dollars to clean this up.”

The Sweetwater piles are also at least partly the indirect result of a rule clarification the Internal Revenue Service issued in 2016. Before then, a wind farm could collect valuable federal tax credits for only its first ten years of operation. But the IRS determined that it would restart the clock on the credits if a wind farm “repowered” its turbines—replacing most of their equipment with newer parts. So, despite the expected two-decade lifespan for turbine blades, wind farms across Texas and other states began replacing many that remained in good shape years early.

Some paid Global Fiberglass to remove the older blades and haul them away. The company set up shop in an empty industrial facility in Sweetwater that was once an aluminum recycling plant, but Don Lilly, the managing director of Global Fiberglass, told me that only a handful of blades have ever been ground up there. He said the company was close to ramping up and would soon mill the blades into pieces the size of coarse sand. “The blade material is sold,” he said, “but I can’t go into that part yet.”

Sweetwater has heard such pledges before. The county declared the stockpile a public nuisance a year ago. City attorney Jeff Allen said Sweetwater’s local ordinances are aimed at overgrown lots, not turbine blades, leaving the city with limited legal options. He said he believes Global Fiberglass “intended to be a viable business” but at some point “it just came off the rails.” (Lilly disputes this and says the delays have come from ensuring “all systems were engineered.”)

The wind industry claims Sweetwater benefits from the local wind farms nearby. Drivers arriving on I-20 from either direction are welcomed by a giant wind turbine blade painted with the town’s name. But even the community’s biggest boosters of renewable energy long ago ran out of patience with Global Fiberglass’s mess. “We’d like to see them gone,” said Karen Hunt, director of the local chamber of commerce. “The sooner the better.”

Sweetwater isn’t the only place Global Fiberglass has stockpiled blades. It has a total of 1,300 in Newton, Iowa, and two other cities in that state, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources. After an investigation, the agency concluded in 2021 there was no recycling going on, nor was any likely to happen. It declared the company to be running an unpermitted dump.

Frank Liebl, executive director of the Newton Development Corporation, testified at a state hearing that the initial excitement in 2017 of recruiting a blade-recycling company soon soured. In the intervening years, he asked Global Fiberglass many times when it would begin its recycling. He always got “the same answer: ‘Soon,’ ” he said.

By July 2021, the company owed more than $1 million in unpaid rent in Newton, according to testimony at the Iowa hearing from its landlord’s attorney. In Texas, it failed to pay taxes to Nolan County in 2020 and is now three years in arrears, according to tax records. Last year, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality fined the company $10,255 for what it described as illegally stored solid waste. It allowed the company to pay the penalty in monthly installments for three years. In June, Global Fiberglass defaulted, according to the commission.

In Newton, pressure from the state of Iowa seems to have worked. Craig Armstrong, a city employee, said that General Electric recently acquired the blades. It’s unclear whether GE purchased them from Global Fiberglass or from the landlord who was owed the $1 million in rent, who may have taken possession of the blades. The city was promised that they would be sent to a recycling center by the end of the year, although none had been removed by mid-August, according to a Newton city official. Lilly declined to talk about the Iowa blades.
Texas Monthly