Fig. 1: A changing energy landscape.
From: Waste not, want not
Jochen Tack / Alamy Stock Photo
The coal-fired Scholven Power Station, Germany, was commissioned in the 1940s, burning coal to generate power but also releasing waste greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The encroaching wind turbines — requiring steel, copper, aluminium, rare earth elements, zinc and molybdenum — generate renewable energy without the associated waste but still require innovation in design, decommissioning and recycling to limit the total impact of their manufacture and use.
