Politics Home Article | It’s time to think circular for Clean Power 2030

With the excellent news of Allocation Round 7’s bumper budget allocation, delivering 8.4GW of contracts for new offshore wind turbines in Britain’s waters, attention is now turning to how the supply chain can be turbocharged to get them built.

Meeting the government’s ambitious 2030 offshore wind deployment targets of 43-50GW will require up to 12 million tonnes of steel, 9-12 million tonnes of concrete, and vast amounts of copper, aluminium and rare earth elements.¹ The government is already pulling levers to help the supply chain scale up to meet this demand; Great British Energy has announced £300m in capital grant funding to build UK manufacturing capacity for key constrained components in offshore wind and enabling electricity networks sectors.

But delivering these targets sustainably demands more than just new turbines – it requires a coherent strategy for the end-of-life management, reuse and recycling of wind turbine compo­nents. Effective circularity in wind supply chains can unlock economic, environmental and strategic benefits that support the government’s broader industrial and net-zero objectives.

The UK’s earliest commercial wind turbines are now approach­ing the end of their expected operational lifespans, creating an urgent need to prepare for the decommissioning challenge, which will only increase over the coming years.

Embedding circular economy principles – reducing, reusing and recycling – across the wind sector preserves finite resources, reduces carbon emissions, and strengthens supply-chain resilience. It also aligns with UK industrial growth priorities by stimulating new manufacturing and recycling businesses. For example, emerging partnerships like the ‘Re-Rewind’ initiative are exploring how to create the UK’s first circular supply chain for rare earth magnets, a critical material in turbine genera­tors, reducing dependence on imports and supporting future turbine manufacturing.

A series of collaborative initiatives highlights the sector’s commitment to these goals. The ‘Regulations to Ensure Sustainable Circular Use at End-of-Life for Wind’ (RESCUE) project, led by ORE Catapult alongside the University of Leeds, University of the West of England, University of Birmingham, EMR and Ionic Technologies, aims to identify regulatory barriers and opportunities to establish a robust end-of-life materials network.

The early discovery phase of RESCUE revealed that current waste and resource regulations risk stifling innovation needed for reuse, repair and recy­cling. The implementation phase seeks to address these barriers through collaborative governance, capacity building and regulatory sandboxes that pilot circular solutions.

Complementing this work, the University of Leeds policy briefing on enhancing resilience and circular economy in wind supply chains highlights that the existing policy landscape – spanning over 170 regulations, standards and planning frame­works – remains fragmented.

For Parliament, supporting circular wind strategies is not merely environmental stewardship. It is strategic industrial policy – strengthening UK supply chains, mitigating mate­rial risks, and ensuring that as turbines are built, they are also responsibly retired and recycled, contributing directly to the Clean Power 2030 agenda.

On Monday 16^th March, ORE Catapult will be hosting a Parliamentary Reception in the Terrace Pavilion to launch its latest RESCUE report. Please join us to hear more about how circularity in offshore wind will not only benefit our energy security and clean power targets, but also boost regional growth in key coastal constituencies.

 For more information about our reception, please email [email protected].

 Reference

1. https://circulareconomy.leeds.ac.uk/enhancing-resilience-and-circular-economy-in-uk-wind-supply-chains/