Wind turbine manufacturer ENERCON, subsidiary of Salzgitter AG Ilsenburger Grobblech GmbH and TM Group company SMB Schönebecker Maschinenbau GmbH are cooperating to produce a lower-emissions steel tower, marking a step towards achieving more sustainability in the production processes of wind turbines. The steel tower components resulting from the cooperation will be put to use early in 2025 on an E-138 EP3 wind turbine as part of the Diepholzer Bruch wind farm project in Lower Saxony, Germany. This will make it one of the first onshore wind turbines in Europe—and the first in Germany—to feature a tower made from lower-emissions steel, often referred to as ‘green steel’.
“Working together with such strong partners from the steel industry means we are making significant progress in our mission to integrate sustainability systematically and measurably in our products and processes,” said Stefan Frey, ENERCON Global Procurement Director for Towers. “By combining our expertise, we can reduce the CO2 footprint of this steel tower by more than 70 percent. This cooperation provides us with an important basis from which we can offer our customers an even more sustainable tower option in future, while of course maintaining our high quality standards and using state-of-the-art tower technology.”
Wind turbines with a hybrid tower concept are made completely of steel. The bottom is composed of pre-edged steel plates, and the top of conical steel sections. This type of tower offers advantages both for installation and transport, particularly in view of increasing tower heights with even larger tower base diameters. In addition to this, steel is entirely recyclable.
In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the production of heavy plates, Ilsenburger Grobblech GmbH is using physically CO2-reduced slabs from its sister company Peiner Träger GmbH and another European partner company for this project. They are produced from scrap in an electric arc furnace (EAF). Furthermore, the company is also focussed on using an energy mix with a significant share of renewable energies.
“We are working closely with strong research and industry partners to achieve a steel production that is as climate-neutral as possible. We are therefore very pleased to be producing the first lower-emissions tower for a wind turbine in Germany together with ENERCON and other companies from the steel industry,” said Thorsten Gintaut, Managing Director of Sales at Ilsenburger Grobblech GmbH.
