In the wind farm of Aldeavieja (Ávila, Spain), the infrastructure repowering driven by Endesa and the Swiss company Holcim has achieved a double objective: increasing renewable generation capacity and recycling the structural waste of their old wind turbines, specifically the blades, to produce sustainable concrete applied in new works within the park itself.
The initiative is part of the European project Blades2Build, led by a consortium of 14 international partners seeking scalable solutions to recycle composite materials from wind turbines. Until now, the blades —made of complex fibers— usually ended up in landfills due to their difficult recovery.
From complex waste to sustainable concrete
The park was repowered with the replacement of 22 old turbines with just 4 new generation ones, which allowed increasing its installed capacity from 14.5 MW to 24 MW. The process was carried out with a zero waste goal: parts reused as spare parts, recycled materials, and most disruptively, the conversion of out-of-use blades into a new type of structural concrete.
The technical procedure consists of:
- Cutting the blades into transportable sections
- Specialized crushing to generate an alternative aggregate
- Concrete formulation with additives derived from recycled fibers
This new material was used, for example, in the foundation of the slab for the park’s evacuation structure, closing the resource’s life cycle at its place of origin.
“The circular economy not only reduces waste and emissions, but also minimizes the extraction of raw materials and unnecessary transportation”, stated Pilar Lara, head of Endesa’s repowering project.
European support and operational horizon
The project was a beneficiary of the investment aid program of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (NextGenerationEU), receiving a grant of 6.51 million euros through the IDAE. It is expected that the park will enter the testing phase in October 2025 and operate fully by the end of that month.
A new generation of circular materials
The Holcim Innovation Center (Lyon) and the Special Concretes Laboratory of Holcim Spain led the technical innovation. They developed a pioneering formulation within the ECOPact range, using the ECOCycle platform, which allows:
- Partially replace natural aggregates with recycled fibers
- Integrate demolition materials, industrial by-products, and difficult-to-reuse compounds
“We managed to design sustainable concrete with innovative additives derived from the crushing of blades, with the approach of building better with less”, highlighted Víctor Pacheco, Holcim’s Innovation Process Manager.
Renewable energy with a cleaner structural footprint
The Blades2Build project and its implementation in Aldeavieja offer a concrete roadmap for circularity in the wind sector, integrating energy, materials, and infrastructure.
This pioneering experience not only reduces waste and emissions, but also sets a new standard for sustainable repowering in Europe.
