Skip to main content

Explore our collection of new stories for this topic.

Search or filter for a specific story using the options below.

January 2025

Jan. 16, 2025

Winners of Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize Enhance Domestic Recycling Industry With Novel Innovations

The $5.1 million prize, which was launched by the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Energy Technologies Office and is administered by NREL, is tackling the challenge of recycling turbine blades and other hard-to-recycle components.

August 2024

Aug. 22, 2024

News Release: NREL Advances Method for Recyclable Wind Turbine Blades

Researchers at NREL see a realistic path forward to the manufacture of bio-derivable wind blades that can be chemically recycled and the components reused, ending the practice of old blades winding up in landfills at the end of their useful life.

July 2024

July 23, 2024

News Release: NREL Researchers Highlight Opportunities for Manufacturing Perovskite Solar Panels With a Long-Term Vision

Researchers working at the forefront of an emerging photovoltaic technology are thinking ahead about how to scale, deploy, and design future solar panels to be easily recyclable.

April 2024

April 18, 2024

The (In)Visible Plastic Pollution Problem

Together, BOTTLE's upstream approach and WaterPACT's downstream approach to addressing the plastic pollution problem will enable a better future for humanity and our environment.

January 2024

Jan. 16, 2024

News Release: NREL Selects JE Dunn Construction and SmithGroup as Design-Build Contractor for Newest Laboratory

NREL has chosen JE Dunn Construction with its design partner SmithGroup to design and build a new research facility on the east side of its South Table Mountain Campus in Golden, Colorado.

December 2023

Dec. 18, 2023

News Release: NREL Research Quantifies Losses From Cardboard, Paper Waste

Piles of cardboard and paper littering America's landfills represent $4 billion in lost economic value, according to a new analysis by researchers at NREL.

November 2023

Nov. 15, 2023

Coming Soon to a Grid Near You: Clean Energy (Batteries Not Included)

NREL's far-reaching research on batteries helps ensure their safety, longevity, and sustainability through reuse and recycling, minimizing the environmental impact of recycling processes, and investigating how to scale up recycling from benchtop testing to industrial scenarios.

Nov. 14, 2023

Photovoltaic Toxicity and Waste Concerns Are Overblown, Slowing Decarbonization--NREL Researchers Are Setting the Record Straight

Photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation is essential for achieving decarbonization targets and mitigating climate change.

Nov. 2, 2023

How Can We Avoid Drinking Forever Chemicals and Arsenic?

A new ion exchange model can help utilities and researchers simulate and study different system designs to remove forever chemicals from water.

July 2023

July 12, 2023

New Prize To Propel Wind Turbine Materials Recycling

The newly launched Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize, a $5.1 million competition administered by NREL, aims to help the country develop a cost-effective and sustainable domestic recycling industry for two high-impact categories of wind turbine materials to create a circular U.S. wind energy economy.


Share

Last Updated May 5, 2025