Siemens Gamesa has introduced the GreenerTower, a more sustainable wind turbine tower made of environmentally friendly steel.
This tower option will be available for both onshore and offshore wind turbines for projects installed from 2024.
The tower’s steel plates account for approximately 80 percent of the tower’s composition, and the GreenerTower will reduce CO2 emissions by at least 63 percent compared to conventional steel.
Siemens Gamesa has established a stringent qualification process for the GreenerTower, allowing for a maximum of 0.7 tons of CO2-equivalent emissions per ton of steel while maintaining the same steel properties and quality.
Maximilian Schnippering, Head of Sustainability at Siemens Gamesa, notes that with the wind industry set to install over 600 GW of new capacity in the next five years, the industry must reduce its carbon footprint.
Tower production accounts for more than one-third of all wind-turbine-related CO2 emissions. If all towers installed by Siemens Gamesa in one year were replaced with GreenerTowers, this would be equivalent to removing more than 466,000 cars from the roads in Europe for a year.
The GreenerTower has already secured its first order, with RWE and Siemens Gamesa agreeing to introduce 36 GreenerTowers at the 1,000-MW Thor offshore wind power project in Denmark, with plans to install a total of 72 SG 14-236 DD offshore wind turbines starting in 2026.
Sven Utermohlen, CEO of RWE Offshore Wind, stated that RWE is leading the way in reducing the carbon footprint of wind turbines by piloting the GreenerTower at their Thor offshore wind farm, where the world’s first recyclable wind turbine blades by Siemens Gamesa are already being tested under real-life conditions.
The first supplier to be qualified for the GreenerTower is the German steel manufacturing company Salzgitter AG, with its heavy plate mill Ilsenburger Grobblech GmbH.
Siemens Gamesa aims to reduce CO2 emissions during the steel manufacturing process by setting an ambitious threshold of 0.7 tons CO2-equivalent emissions per ton of steel, significantly reducing the footprint of the largest component in terms of CO2-equivalent emissions.