Casper Start-Up Challenge finalist ReviablEnergy transforms wind turbine blades into “real, usable energy”

It started with a photo.

Jake Milne, owner and operator of ReviablEnergy, saw an image one day; the same image that countless other Natrona County residents saw. It was a photo of several wind turbine blades at the Casper Solid Waste Facility – a veritable graveyard for the materials that would remain there forever.

Milne, like many other citizens, reacted with both anger and confusion.

Daily Mail reported that at least 870 turbine blades were stacked in 30-foot deep holes where they were to be buried. Due to the material these blades are made of, it was impossible to disassemble them and it was difficult to recycle them.

“The blades are designed to withstand hurricane-force winds, so they cannot be easily shredded or recycled. In the US, around 8,000 of these blades are taken out of service every year,” wrote the Daily Mail. “When they reach the end of their useful life in wind turbines generating electricity, they must be chopped up using industrial saws into pieces small enough to fit on a flatbed truck and taken to a landfill that will accept them.”

The Casper landfill took them, but the residents there did not. Jake Milne was one of those people. And he wanted to do something about it.

That “something” is ReviblEnergy, a company whose mission is to “reduce industrial waste and ensure a sustainable future for a cleaner economy.”

ReviblEnergy was founded to minimize and reinvent renewable energy waste, such as wind turbine blades, by recycling and reusing them. Milne had been toying with the idea before photos of the Casper landfill outraged the community. But it was that photo and the events surrounding it that finally prompted him and his partner to take action to fix the problem.

“It all started with all the blades that ended up in the city’s landfill,” recalls Milne. “I knew I had to do something, so I spent some time doing research and development and found that mobility was the best way to do it. It reduces costs and carbon emissions. On my first big project, we were able to reduce carbon emissions and transport costs by 400%.”

That was one of the main reasons why Milne and his partner Paul Propst, COO of ReviablEnergy, wanted to start this company. They wanted to make things cleaner – both for the environment and for the economy. And that’s exactly what ReviablEnergy has done so far.

The company was founded in 2023 and has achieved a lot in the short time it has existed. In 2022, ReviablEnergy achieved a NET ZERO, including a carbon reduction of 232% of its annual emissions. Their goal is to maintain a NET ZERO throughout the company’s existence.

“Our name, ReviablEnergy, sounds like ‘real, usable energy,'” Milne explained. “We are a company that processes and recycles wind turbine blades. It was an idea. Now we’ve proven it. It’s no longer a concept. We shred the parts of a blade that can be shredded and send them to the final recycler. The parts that can’t be shredded, we either send to a partner for reuse, or we do the reuse in-house to sell culverts and the like at a lower price than a traditional culvert would cost.”

ReviblEnergy is a fully permitted facility located in Casper, Wyoming, with state-of-the-art mobile operating capabilities throughout the United States. It is capable of processing and shredding 80,000 pounds of fiberglass per day and processed over 900 tons of wind turbine blades here in 2022.

In short: ReviblEnergy has achieved a lot in a very short time. But the company wants more. Jake and his partner want more. That’s why they are taking part in the Casper Start-Up Challenge.

Milne is one of five finalists in the Casper Start-Up Challenge, which is designed to help “new, independent businesses in the startup or early growth stages in Natrona County,” according to the Advance Casper website. The top three winners of the Casper Start-Up Challenge will receive seed capital, as well as support with marketing, networking and mentoring throughout the challenge and beyond.

Milne will present his business plan for ReviablEnergy during the 2024 Casper Start-Up Challenge Pitch Night, which will take place at Frontier Brewing Company on September 5. Pitch Night begins at 5:30 p.m. and the public is welcome to attend and listen as Milne, as well as the other finalists, pitch their startups to a select, diverse panel of judges.

As one of the five finalists in the Casper Start-Up Challenge, ReviablEnergy hopes that the advice, networking opportunities and, yes, seed money will help them do even more work with/in/for the community. But whether they win the challenge or not, ReviablEnergy isn’t going anywhere.

“Whether we win the Start-Up Challenge or not, we’re definitely going to get noticed,” Milne explained. “We’re going to learn some things and find out about the preparation and all the extra things that the Start-Up Challenge offers each participant. And it’s a lot more than I thought, that’s for sure. I thought it was just going to be a pitch and then another pitch. But no, they’ve So In the meantime, there is a lot of good to be done that will really build the skills of all the finalists and give them more opportunities to grow their business.”

Milne said if ReviblEnergy wins the competition, all proceeds will immediately go toward marketing efforts and hiring a sales representative.

“We found that this business is very similar to the oil and gas business,” he said, “and there are a lot of people in this business who came out of the oil and gas business and moved into the green energy space. But the basic lines are the same. People want to shake your hand. They want to know your face. And that’s one of the reasons we want to hire a sales person – so they can go out on the road and land some projects and bring that money back to Wyoming.”

Bringing money, business and jobs to Wyoming is a big goal for Milne and his partner, making them perfect candidates for the Casper Start-Up Challenge.

“We’re working on hopefully bringing a full-scale recycling facility to Casper,” Milne said. “We’re working with municipalities and local vendors who sell things like culverts and more. We’re trying to bring more of that industry to Wyoming and create more jobs. And to do that, we need to have the right people in place.”

Milne and his partner were in the right place at the right time. Milne had previously worked in industrial construction, primarily in the oil, gas and coal sectors. That had been his profession for most of his life.

“But then I saw all these wind turbines being built, even as a kid, and then you learned that their lifespan is about 20 years,” he said. “And then 2020 came and it was, ‘Well, we’re going to dump all these blades in your landfill.’ And that was huge. They didn’t see that coming at all. They missed it. In the oil and gas industry, we have to have a plan long before a project even starts, from start to finish. And so I thought, ‘You know what? There’s a way to do this.’ So I started figuring it out. I figured out what other people were doing — what worked, what didn’t work — and once we figured it out, it was, ‘Okay, let’s go to market and see what we can do here.'”

And what ReviblEnergy does, simply put, is to make the local environment safer, cleaner and better.

“We’re going to make sure the blades don’t end up in our landfill,” Milne said. “Wyoming is an environmentally conscious state, and this whole thing has brought us really bad publicity. The article went around the world. So we’re going to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. We’re going to make sure that green energy is really clean energy. And we’re going to bring all those jobs back to Wyoming by opening new recycling facilities with our partners. We’re going to bring money back to Wyoming and employ Wyoming people. So not only are we doing something good for the environment, but we’re also trying to stimulate our local economy and keep the money in Wyoming.”

Milne and Propst have already started doing that. Currently, their preferred recycling partner is Regen Fiber, and the partner they are working with for reuse is a name that will be familiar to Casper residents: Chris Navarro. They are also working with CANVUS Repurposing, which is making chairs and an assortment of other reusable products out of the blade materials.

It was an image that inspired Jake Milne to start ReviblEnergy, but the idea behind it lived in his head and heart long before that. The Casper Start-Up Challenge allows him to take that idea forward as he and his team continue to provide better solutions for a better environment.

“There are some great companies among the competition finalists and we wish them all the best of luck,” Milne said. “As for us, we are a company with roots in Wyoming and we will keep those roots here. Whether we win the competition or not, we will remain focused on our mission; that will never change!”

It’s a mission that started with a simple photo, then a question, and finally a solution. That solution is called ReviblEnergy, and with the help of the Casper Start-Up Challenge, they want to provide Casper and the surrounding area with real, usable energy.

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