Wind energy material requirements in the UK

Case study

Context

The UK plans to quadruple its offshore wind capacity and double its onshore capacity by 2030. By mass, a turbine is mostly concrete and steel. Its generator, blades and cables also require composites, copper and rare earths. Meeting these targets therefore depends on securing volumes of materials that are partly sourced from a small number of producing countries.

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) wanted to measure this dependency. The data available in the UK, however, covered neither wind energy material requirements, nor the split between turbine technologies, nor the volumes expected at decommissioning. Without this quantified basis, the RSC could not support its recommendations on materials management.

Our approach

Turbine technology has a greater effect on wind energy material requirements than the number of turbines. A direct-drive permanent magnet generator, for example, uses fifteen times more neodymium than a doubly-fed induction generator. We therefore combined the installed fleet, capacity targets and the changing market shares of five technologies. From this, we derived the consumption of 17 materials and the decommissioning waste up to 2050, then compared these requirements with the countries where the materials are extracted and the sites where components are manufactured.

We then examined whether maintenance, refurbishment, reuse, repowering and recycling could reduce this dependency. The technical solutions exist. Their uptake is held back by the contractual and regulatory framework: leases of around 25 years set the lifespan that turbines are designed for, and the EU prohibits reused parts in subsidised wind farms.

Results

Drawing on our modelling work, the RSC published the report “Not out of thin air” in December 2024, which calls for a national materials strategy built on circularity.

40 million tonnes of materials are needed to meet the 2030 targets, and 95 million tonnes cumulatively by 2050.

48.6% of cumulative aluminium requirements and 44.1% of cumulative nickel requirements to 2050 must be met before 2030.

More than one million tonnes of composites will be needed for blades over the next decade, and 570,000 tonnes of copper by 2050.

44 GW of turbines will need to be decommissioned before 2050, generating around 20 million tonnes of waste.