Action plan for a circular energy transition

Case study

Context

The renewable energy sector has grown fast, generating 40% of the UK’s electricity in 2022.

But this growth relies on rising consumption of critical materials (rare earths, cobalt, lithium, copper) and on equipment (solar panels, wind turbines, batteries) designed with no end-of-life plan: the sector faces a “tsunami of waste” from 2030 onwards.

The Green Purposes Company (GPC), the UK body safeguarding the Green Investment Bank’s green mission, wanted to inform policymakers, investors, and industry about these risks.

But it had no assessment of the circular economy’s opportunities for this sector, nor a structured action plan to guide their decisions.

Our approach

GATE C, with co-author Lenaïc Gravis, analyzed the renewable energy sector’s critical material needs and mapped circular practices already in place across the sector and adjacent industries (wind turbine gearbox remanufacturing by Renew and Boythorpe, solar panel recycling by ROSI Solar, among others). This analysis structured an action plan around 3 levers: design assets for a circular economy, build circular value chains, and create the right economic and policy conditions.

GATE C then presented this action plan directly to decision-makers at the report’s launch in the UK House of Commons, hosted by the Green Purposes Company and Policy Connect. Rémy Le Moigne, GATE C’s managing director and the report’s author, presented the recommendations to a panel bringing together a government minister, an investor, an academic, and an energy industry executive.

Results

13 recommendations structured around 3 action levers (design, value chains, economic and policy conditions), addressed separately to industry, investors, and policymakers

Report launched in the UK House of Commons, chaired by Lord Teverson

Opening keynote from Lord Callanan, UK Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero

Panel responses from Green Investment Group, the University of Leeds, and Ørsted