Swedish firm converts retired wind turbine parts into tiny homes and ski gear

As Europe expands wind capacity, Vattenfall is experimenting with reuse of retired turbine parts to avoid landfill. Partnering with Superuse, the firm transformed a nacelle cover from an Austrian turbine into a 4 m × 10 m × 3 m tiny house featuring a kitchen, bathroom, heat pump and solar energy systems, displayed at Dutch Design Week 2024. In another initiative, 57 blades from the Danish Nørre Økse Sø farm were incorporated into a multi-storey car-park façade in Lund and fashioned into alpine skis.

While such prototypes are not yet scalable, they provide experience for circular markets. Vattenfall continues to develop mechanical recycling, pyrolysis and energy-recovery methods for composite blade materials, targeting 100 % circularity by 2030. The company calls for EU-wide bans on blade landfill and a regulatory framework to support secondary raw-material value chains.