Abstract:
The rapid expansion of wind power capacity has made installed wind turbines an important carrier of in-use metal stocks, and accurately identifying this resource inventory is essential for the resource-oriented recycling of retired wind turbines and the layout of wind power urban mines. Taking the wind turbine bodies of 4 295 grid-connected wind farms across 31 provincial-level administrative regions in China, excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, by the end of 2025 as the research object, this study selectes seven metals, namely Fe, Cu, Al, Pr, Nd, Dy, and Tb. Based on metal parameters for 64 types of wind turbines ranging from 0.15 to 15 MW, a wind-farm-level bottom-up accounting framework for in-use metal stocks is constructed to analyze their spatial differentiation, technology route contributions, and provincial urban mining potential. The results show that China’s wind turbine bodies have accumulated in-use stocks of 74.744 3 million t of Fe, 0.927 8 million t of Cu, 0.700 4 million t of Al, as well as 6 524.49 t of Pr, 26 254.86 t of Nd, 4 371.23 t of Dy, and 1 006.92 t of Tb. Total metal stocks are mainly dominated by installed capacity and are concentrated in provinces with large wind power capacity, such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Hebei, Gansu, and Shandong. In contrast, rare earth metal stocks are more strongly affected by technology routes and show spatial deviations that are not fully consistent with installed capacity. Doubly fed turbines contribute 52.52% of total metal stocks and represent the main carrier of bulk metals, whereas direct-drive turbines account for only 22.32% of installed capacity but contribute 86.17% of total rare earth metal stocks, indicating a significant rare earth amplification and lock-in effect. The zoning results indicate that provinces differ in their functional roles in large-scale bulk metal recovery and targeted rare earth magnet recycling. This study suggests that the resource-oriented recycling management of retired wind turbines should shift from an installed-capacity-oriented approach to a metal-stock-oriented approach. Turbine models, technology routes, commissioning years, and metal intensities should be incorporated into a unified inventory system, and dismantling, sorting, magnet pretreatment, and recycling capacities should be arranged by category, so as to support the development of wind-turbine-equipment-level urban mines, recycling network optimization, and secondary rare earth resource supply.