House Advances Three Bills to Expand Critical Mineral Recycling
Three bipartisan critical minerals bills aligned with NAM strategy took another step forward in the legislative process this week (POLITICO Pro, subscription).
What’s going on: On Tuesday, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment approved the Battery Recycling for America’s Competitive Economy (BRACE) Act, the Environmental Monitoring and Remediation Technology Assessment Initiative (EMRTAI) Act and the Coordinating and Harnessing America’s Recovery of Minerals (CHARM) Act.
- Collectively, the measures would “expand federal regulators’ role in reclaiming and recycling critical minerals.”
- The “bills … demonstrate how we can grow the economy and protect national security while maintaining a healthy environment,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) said.
What they’d do: The BRACE Act would make lithium-ion “batteries subject to less stringent pollution controls under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.”
- The EMRTAI Act would put about $10 million toward an Environmental Protection Agency pilot program to extract critical minerals from Superfund sites.
- And the CHARM Act would direct the EPA to coordinate a strategy to recover critical minerals from waste.
Why they’re important: The NAM recently released a new policy agenda—and these three pieces of legislation fit into the strategy’s support for updated critical mineral recycling policies.
- “Unearthing Mineral Solutions: A Comprehensive Critical Minerals Agenda for Manufacturers in America” offers a blueprint for kickstarting U.S. production of these materials.
- “The cost of inaction is too great,” the NAM warns in its policy agenda. “China’s dominance over critical minerals is the result of decades of industrial strategy, and America requires bold and strategic action to reset this dynamic.”
