Governor Newsom just vetoed a faulty battery bill. A revised 2025 version must address key shortcomings.
This article originally appeared in Earth Island Journal.
California Governor Gavin Newsom recently vetoed Senate Bill 615, which aimed to establish regulations for the reuse and recycling of electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Rightly so.
The bill, introduced in 2022, was among the first battery recycling legislative proposals in the nation and it took an important first step toward establishing battery manufacturers’ and suppliers’ responsibility for end-of-life management. While it is encouraging that the state is working to develop transport electrification standards that will protect communities and the environment, and ensure materials used in vehicles and batteries are kept in circulation as long as possible, this bill was overly vague in its definitions, scope and lines of accountability. Most egregiously, it would have sanctioned burning batteries as “recycling” and allowed potential waste dumping as a “responsible” form of end-of-life management, as GAIA and six other environmental justice organizations warned in our opposition letter to SB615.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s veto pointed out that the bill included many loopholes allowing battery suppliers to avoid responsibility for recycling, repurposing, and data transparency. Additionally, it did not build on California’s existing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) models and instead burdened the state Department of Toxic and Substance Control (DTSC) with the responsibility of developing, implementing, and enforcing standards and regulations for the battery producer responsibility program.
Batteries play a pivotal role in our efforts to transition to a fossil fuel-free future. But as with any energy system, renewables come with their own set of challenges and impacts. With rapidly evolving battery technologies and build-out of electrification infrastructure, it’s imperative that waste and pollution are addressed and that we prioritize solutions at the top of the zero waste hierarchy (rethink, reduce, reuse) over those at bottom (recycle, other material recovery, disposal).
Newsom has encouraged the bill’s author, Senator Ben Allen (El Segundo), to introduce a revised bill that addresses these concerns at the next legislative session in the new year. GAIA applauds the Governor’s veto, and has several key demands for the new version:
Use coherent definitions of recycling
Incineration is not recycling. SB615 would have allowed incineration as a form of recycling. This goes against California’s track record of not allowing incineration, combustion, energy generation, and other forms of disposal to qualify as a form of “recycling.”
Incineration produces air, water, and soil pollution; it endangers human health while destroying, rather than recovering, valuable materials. Allowing incineration as recycling was the most grave of many shortcomings in SB615’s loose and vague definition of recycling. At a minimum, the new bill must state that recycling does not include combustion, incineration, energy generation, fuel production, and other forms of disposal. It should align with the definition of recycling set out in the California Responsible Battery Recycling Act of 2022.
Given the nascent and dynamic field of battery recycling technologies — almost all of which use some form of thermal treatment that carries significant risks that have yet to be fully documented and assessed — the bill should include an assessment of proposed recycling pathways for their viability and require a “peer review” or scientific baseline to be qualified as recycling. A peer review process will ensure that recycling pathways are regularly assessed for continuous improvement on the highest material recovery rates, lower carbon footprint, and energy intensity, and fewer risks of toxic impacts on frontline communities.
In the previous bill, the recycling definition covered only a very small percentage of the battery mass, leaving most battery material, including hazardous material, for disposal. It further failed to define black mass — an intermediate product during battery recycling — or set target material recovery rates or require reporting on those rates. Neither did it clearly define responsible end markets. These definition gaps should be rectified.
Set clear and enforceable collection, testing, and decision-making parameters
The new bill must clarify vague language, such as that stating that battery suppliers should “adhere to the battery waste management hierarchy” in deciding what to do with a used traction battery (rechargeable batteries for EVs and heavy machinery). This vagueness gives battery suppliers a free hand to choose how and what they will reuse and/or recycle without having to justify their decision-making.
The previous bill defined the “battery management hierarchy” as:
“a hierarchy of battery management wherein the entity in possession of the battery shall first strive to reuse, repair, or remanufacture the battery when possible and cost effective. When that is not possible or cost effective, that entity shall ensure that the battery is either repurposed or recycled. If a battery cannot be cost-effectively used in any application, that entity shall ensure the battery is recycled.”
But allowing a battery supplier to base their decision-making on cost effectiveness gives them a major loophole to avoid responsibility for end-of-life management.
The new bill should have a management hierarchy that prioritizes repurposing before recycling.
Repurposing “good quality” used EV batteries saves significant embedded carbon emissions, reduces the need for new mining for minerals needed in batteries, and maximizes the useful life of the materials. Repurposed EV batteries that meet stringent quality standards are up to 40 percent less expensive than new stationary battery storage systems, and so provide an alternative for energy storage and access to electricity in low- and middle-income communities locally and in developing countries.
To prioritize repurposing before recycling, California will have to develop policies around battery inspection and testing before recycling and adopt clear parameters to guide decision-making on repair, reuse, remanufacturing, and repurposing batteries before recycling.
Certification standards for EV battery repurposing facilities, such as UL1974. can provide some useful guidance in this respect, and could be used as an initial benchmark. The new bill can include a provision to update that benchmark when standards are revised or new standards are made available with more stringent requirements protecting the environment and public health, similar to California Public Resources Code 42356.1.
The new bill should also address export of used batteries and black mass, given repurposed batteries risk being considered second rate, and dumped in low-income communities and countries. The second life industry need to have regulations in place to prevent waste colonialism. The bill should also ensure that all relevant right to repair laws apply to EV batteries.
Require robust data transparency
SB615 had limited data reporting requirements that applied primarily to the sale and transfer of traction batteries. The new bill should require suppliers to provide battery data information to a central repository, including information about its state of health, chemical composition, replacement parts, safe handling, dismantling instructions and repair manuals, and data about the battery supplier’s decision-making on the next use in the hierarchy, and data on the emissions from battery recycling facilities.
These facilities rely on hazardous processes such as hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy (high heat) that can impact the environment and health of nearby communities. These communities have a right to information about potential environmental and health exposures from the facility processing these batteries, which have toxic materials. Providing data on full recovery waste of all materials as well as reporting on volumes of waste generated, and on energy and water consumption, can help inform efforts to reduce the facility’s environmental footprint and to verify the credibility of recyclers’ sustainability claims.
In addition to these three key asks, the bill should have provisions ensuring:
Strengthened accountability for battery suppliers. This is especially necessary in the case of batteries, which have a complicated and dynamic chain of custody. The definition of who is the supplier changes over time, and this raises the question of how to assign liability over time to engage those responsibilities. Liability is critical and related to collection as well: the bill should require manufacturers and suppliers set up a system to collect all traction batteries, regardless of the supplier. At the moment, collection requirements are scattered depending on the supplier, and there is no clear breakdown of which collection cost categories suppliers are responsible for. Collection accounts for a significant share, at times 40 percent, of the cost of battery recycling.
Objective standards and coherent definitions of a “qualified recycler.” The original bill’s definition of a “qualified battery recycler” used undefined terms (such as “elemental component”), was not flexible enough to accommodate changing battery chemistries, and risked allowing waste-to-energy or smelters to qualify as recyclers. In other recycling sectors (such as electronics, or lead acid batteries), smelters or other crude pyrometallurgical refining processes that cheaply recover select materials financially undercut more legitimate recyclers with technologies designed to recover higher rates of materials, but at higher operating costs. GAIA strongly suggests requiring qualified recyclers to comply with third-party electronic recycling facility certifying body standards such as such as ANSI, R2, SERI or E-Stewards.
EPR scheme governance shared across CalRecycle and DTSC. California’s current electronic waste recycling scheme is governed by both CalRecycle and DTSC. CalRecycle has successfully implemented many reuse and recycling systems that significantly reduce waste and create jobs by turning a challenging product into a resource. The Extended Producer Responsibility for batteries program should benefit from state agencies with experience in recycling and EPR schemes, while maintaining DTSC’s role on regulation of hazardous materials.
Include repairability, performance, and ecodesign requirements in the EPR scheme. The EPR scheme should state minimum repairability and performance requirements and reward battery configurations and materials that are durable and environmentally-friendly.
Costs. Cost coverage of battery collection system must be better defined to fully cover the cost of safe transportation, collection logistics, and reporting obligations.
Invest in Research and Development (R&D). The bill should require scaled-up and intensified R&D in safer recycling processes, such as mechanical or direct recycling, that offer the highest material recovery rates of all materials with lower costs, lower carbon footprint, and fewer risks of toxic impacts on frontline communities. Such investments should also consider the social costs of transition, and embed safeguards for frontline workers.
Given California is leading the way in the clean energy transition, adopting zero waste solutions for renewable energy systems should be a priority from the outset during this period of industry innovation and standard-setting. By integrating environmental justice and end-of-life considerations into the design of systems and products, and providing access to information, we can drive innovation that supports true circularity and ensure that no communities are left behind while advancing climate solutions.
Sheila Davis
Sheila has played a leadership role in shaping environmental policy in the high-tech industry, including the Solar Scorecard, a ban on hazardous electronic waste from California municipal landfills, and the subsequent passage of the first electronic recycling legislation in the nation. Sheila is the Battery Waste Coordinator for GAIA US & Canada, based in San Francisco, California.
