You can ride the waves, you can ride the wind, and now you can ride the waves on the wind — turbine, that is. Or at least, you could if you were one of the lucky few who got to test the world’s first surfboards made from a retired wind turbine blade.
The boards are the result of a collab between renewable energy and infrastructure company Acciona and Australian pro surfer Josh Kerr’s brand Draft Surf, as part of an initiative exploring novel ways to transform decommissioned turbine blades into new products.
Ten prototypes, all made out of one blade formerly used on Acciona’s wind farm in Victoria, Australia, were handcrafted by Draft Surf on the Gold Coast. They were unveiled in early March at a launch event in Sydney, where Kerr, several influencers, and some surf industry reps tried them out in a pool. Prior to the event, Kerr also put one to the test in the ocean to ensure it could hold up to some truly gnarly waves.
“The board was tested at Cathedral Rocks Wind Farm in South Australia in serious wave conditions with shallow reef and steep cliff faces,” Kerr said in a statement shared with Nice News.
He added that it “demonstrated excellent stability and performance, particularly due to three key components from the turbine: the fins, which provided good stiffness and held their line well; the flex pattern inserts milled from the blade that gave the perfect amount of stiffness to the epoxy core; and the ground-up turbine particulate in the resin that added strength and dampening.”
Per Acciona, over 85% of the materials that make up a wind turbine are easy to recycle, but the fiberglass and epoxy resin blades “are the most complex component to recover.” The company noted that in Australia and beyond, thousands of blades are soon set to be dismantled as they come to the end of their useful life.
“We know that in the next five to 10 years, countries like Australia will have a large volume of decommissioned wind turbine blades, so we’re acting now to explore new ways to recycle and reuse the material they are built from,” Acciona Energia’s global sustainability director, Mariola Domenech, said in a news release.
The company launched the Turbine Made initiative “to start the conversation” around recycling wind turbine blades on the continent and plans to partner with other local innovators like Draft Surf to explore eco-friendly applications for the blade materials.
“Sustainability isn’t just about reducing waste — it’s about product stewardship, ensuring that what we build today doesn’t become tomorrow’s environmental challenge,” Domenech added. “By working with Australian manufacturers, designers, and innovators, we can encourage the creation of practical, high-performance applications that benefit both industry and the environment.”
Next stop for one of the surfboards is the Australian Boardriders Battle April 12-13 on the Gold Coast. An Acciona rep told Nice News: “Josh is planning to use the board in the competition and we’re hoping to be able to make this not just a world-first, but also an award-winning surfboard.”
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