Casper Start-Up Challenge finalist ReviablEnergy is turning wind turbine blades into ‘real, viable energy’

It started with a photograph.

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

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

Daily Mail reported that at least 870 turbine blades were stacked into 30-foot holes, where they would be buried. Because of the material these blades are made of, it was impossible for them to break down and it was hard for them to be recycled.

“Built to withstand hurricane winds, the turbine blades cannot easily be crushed or recycled. About 8,000 of the blades are decommissioned in the U.S. every year,” Daily Mail wrote. “Once they reach the end of their useful life on electricity-generating wind turbines, the blades have to be hacked up with industrial saws into pieces small enough to fit on a flat-bed trailer and hauled to a landfill that accepts them.”

Casper’s landfill did accept them. But its people did not. Jake Milne was one of those people. nd he wanted to do something about it.

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

ReviablEnergy was created to minimize and reimagine renewable energy waste, such as wind turbine blades, by recycling and repurposing them. It was an idea that Milne had been toying with even before photos from the Casper landfill outraged the community. But that photo, and the events surrounding it, were what finally emblazoned him and his partner to do something to fix it.

“This all started with all the blades that went to the city landfill,” Milne reflected. “I knew I had to do something, so I spent some time doing research and development, and I figured out that being mobile is the way to get this done. It reduces the costs and it reduces the CO2 emissions. The first large project that I had done, we saw a 400% reduction in CO2 omissions and trucking costs.”

That was one of the big reasons Milne and his partner, Paul Propst, who serves as the COO of ReviablEnergy, wanted to create this company. They wanted to clean things up — both the environment and the economy. So far, that’s exactly what ReviablEnergy has been doing.

The company was established in 2023 and, in the short time it’s been around, it has accomplished much. In 2022, ReviablEnergy achieved a NET ZERO, including a carbon reduction of 232% from their year-to-year emissions. Their goal is to maintain a NET ZERO for the entirety of the company’s existence.

“Our name, ReviablEnergy, sounds like ‘real, viable energy,'” Milne stated. “We’re a wind turbine blade processing and recycling company. 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 we send them to the end recycler, and the parts that cannot be shredded — we either send them off to a partner to be repurposed, or we also do in-house repurposing, to sell culverts and things like that for a lower price than what a traditional culvert is going to cost.”

ReviablEnergy is a fully permitted facility that is located in Casper, Wyoming, and has state-of-the-art mobile operational capacity throughout the United States. It’s able to process and shred 80,000 pounds of fiberglass daily and, in 2022, it processed over 900 tons of wind turbine blades.

In short, ReviablEnergy has done a lot of work in very little time. But it wants to do more. Jake and his partner want to do more. That’s why they’re participating in the Casper Start-Up Challenge.

Milne is one of five finalists in the Casper Start-Up Challenge, which, according to the Advance Casper website, exists to help “new, independent businesses in the seed, start-up, or early growth stages in Natrona County.” The top three winners of the Casper Start-Up challenge will receive seed money, in addition to marketing, networking and mentorship assistance throughout the challenge and beyond.

Milne will present his business plan for ReviablEnergy during the 2024 Casper Start-Up Challenge Pitch Night, happening on Sept. 5 at Frontier Brewing Company. The Pitch Night starts at 5:30 p.m. and the public is welcome to attend and hear Milne, as well as the other finalists, pitch their start-ups to a select, diverse panel of judges.

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

“Whether we win the Start-Up Challenge or not, we are going to get exposure,” Milne stated. “We’re going to learn some things and learn about the preparation and all of the extra stuff that the Start-Up Challenge offers everyone who participates. And it’s way more than I thought it was, that’s for sure. I thought it was just a pitch, and then another pitch. But no, they have so much good stuff in the interim that really strengthens all of the finalists’ abilities and gives them more avenues to grow their business.”

Milne said that if ReviablEnergy wins the challenge, any money they earn will immediately go toward some marketing and hiring a salesperson.

“We’ve found that this business is a lot like the oil and gas business,” he said, “and there are a lot of people in this business that came from oil and gas and moved over into the green energy side of things. But the baselines are the same. People want to shake your hand. They want to know your face. And that’s one of the reasons why we want to get a sales person — to let them hit the road and get some projects and bring this money back to Wyoming.”

Bringing money, and business, and jobs, to Wyoming is a big goal for Milne and his partner. That’s what makes them a perfect candidate for the Casper Start-Up Challenge.

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

Milne and his partner were in the right place, at the exact right time. Previously, Milne worked in industrial construction, primarily in the oil, gas and coal realm. That was his career for the majority of his life.

“But then I started seeing all these wind turbines going up, even from the time I was a kid, and then you find out that their life lasts about 20 years,” he said. “And so then 2020 rolled around and it was like, ‘Well, we’re gonna dump all these blades into your landfill.’ And that was huge. They did not see that coming at all. They overlooked it. In the oil and gas industry, we have to have a plan long before a project even starts, front to finish. And so I was like, ‘You know what? There’s a way to do this.’ So I started trying to figure it out. I figured out what other people were doing — what was working, what wasn’t working — and then once we figured it out, it was like, ‘Alright, let’s go to market and see what we can do here.”

And what ReviablEnergy is doing, in the simplest terms, is making the local environment a safer, cleaner, better place.

“We’re going to make sure that the blades don’t go in our landfill,” Milne said. “Wyoming is an environmentally conscious state, and that whole ordeal really gave us some bad publicity. That article went worldwide. So we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen again. We’re going to make sure that green energy is truly clean energy. And we’re going to bring all of these jobs back to Wyoming by opening new recycling facilities with our partners. We’re going to bring money back to Wyoming and we’re going to hire Wyoming people. So, not only are we doing something that’s good for the environment, we’re trying to boost our local economy and keep the money in Wyoming as well.”

That’s something Milne and Propst have already begun doing. Currently, their preferred recycling partner is Regen Fiber, and the partner they work with for repurposing purposes is a name that should be familiar to Casper residents: Chris Navarro. They also work with CANVUS Repurposing, which uses the blade materials to make chairs and an assortment of other usable products.

It was a picture that inspired Jake Milne to create ReviablEnergy, but the idea behind it lived in his head and heart for a long time before that. The Casper Start-Up Challenge is allowing him to move that idea forward as he and his team continue to offer better solutions for a better environment.

“There are great companies as finalists in the competition and we wish them all the best of success,” Milne stated. “As far as us, we are a Wyoming-rooted company and we will keep those roots planted here. Regardless of if 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 photograph, and then a question, and, finally, a solution. That solution is ReviablEnergy and, with the help of the Casper Start-Up Challenge, they want to provide Casper and surrounding locations with real, viable energy.