As renewable energy accelerates rapidly worldwide, so end-of-life challenges are mounting. From the 1990s onwards, 11,000 onshore wind turbines have been installed in the UK, and an estimate of 400,000 globally, making a significant contribution to energy decarbonisation transitions. Yet sustaining this capacity raises questions about how developers and society handle the options of replacing the original equipment, or repowering with new turbines, raising questions about the long-term sustainability of sites. This question will intensify in salience as market support arrangements that underpinned the wind power growth in many countries come to an end, creating uncertainties for the economics of existing facilities.

There is also the interwoven challenge of handling the materials generated by these processes – redundant towers, turbine blades, turbines and nacelles, foundations, cabling and other on-site infrastructure – to foster safe handling and maximise productive, economic re-use. End-of-life decisions have repercussions for the host communities of wind farms, too, for their economic relations with those facilities, and for effects on the landscape and ecology, especially – but not exclusively – on those occasions when wind farms cease production.