U.S. House Of Representatives Passes Three Bipartisan Bills To Promote Recovery And Recycling Of Critical Minerals From Lithium-Ion Batteries And Other Wastes

On September 15, 2026, the U.S. House of Representatives passed three bills, by voice vote on a bipartisan basis, to promote domestic recovery and recycling of critical minerals from various waste streams, including end-of-life lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Principal Aaron Goldberg (Washington, DC, and Austin) testified in his personal capacity on one of the bills – H.R. 9615, known as the Battery Recycling for America's Competitive Economy (BRACE) Act – before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Environment, on June 24, 2026, and has worked behind the scenes with House counsel to help formulate the legislation. 

This alert briefly discusses each bill. The bills will now move to the U.S. Senate for consideration and potential passage, after which they could be ready for the President’s signature into law.

H.R. 9615: The Battery Recycling for America's Competitive Economy (BRACE) Act

The BRACE Act would amend the federal hazardous waste regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to facilitate recovery and recycling of critical minerals from LIBs. 

It would first correct, on an interim basis, a provision in the RCRA rules that effectively requires LIB recycling facilities to be split into two non-adjacent sites: (i) a facility that does nothing more than store the batteries before recycling and operates without a hazardous waste permit under reduced “universal waste” requirements, and (ii) a nearby (but non-adjacent) recycling facility that must receive the wastes “just in time” for recycling so that it also avoids the need for a hazardous waste storage permit. This regulatory provision serves no environmental purpose; it only adds costs, complicates logistics, and increases transport and handling risks. The legislation would fix this problem by allowing recycling facilities to store the LIBs onsite, as long as they comply with the same universal waste requirements as storage-only facilities.

The bill would further direct EPA, within 18 months of enactment, to issue a rule revising the universal waste requirements for LIBs, potentially by making the interim correction mentioned above permanent, tailoring the storage rules for LIBs, addressing any gaps in current LIB safety requirements, and making other changes to support recycling while protecting human health and the environment.

Finally, the bill would amend the preemption provision in Section 104(a) of the 1996 Mercury-Containing and Rechargeable Battery Management Act (42 U.S.C. § 14323(a)) to specify that the revised universal waste rules for LIBs would preempt state law. The existing statutory provision states that LIBs shall be regulated under the original 1995 universal waste rule notwithstanding any state or local law, which calls into question EPA’s ability to amend the 1995 rule and/or to have any such changes adopted by the 49 states that are now authorized to implement their own hazardous waste programs in lieu of the federal RCRA program. See, e.g., Beveridge & Diamond, “EPA Moving Forward Soon with Rulemaking to Modify and Expand the RCRA Universal Waste Rule for Lithium Batteries and Solar Panels” (October 22, 2025) (discussing “Potential Legal Obstacles” to EPA rulemaking). 

The BRACE Act does not directly address many of the problems that the RCRA program poses for LIB recycling. Instead, it is generally viewed as compromise legislation that would provide some helpful relief, at least on an interim basis, while mandating a new Agency rulemaking that could provide additional relief but could also impose stringent new requirements (e.g., to address fire risks). EPA has been working on such a rulemaking since late in the Biden Administration. The current Regulatory Agenda indicates that the proposed rule should have been issued already, but EPA does not yet appear to have submitted a proposal to the White House Office of Management and Budget for its review, which suggests that the Agency is unlikely to issue a proposal for public comment until early 2027 at the earliest.

H.R. 9616: The Environmental Monitoring and Remediation Technology Assessment Initiative (EMRTAI) Authorization Act

The EMRTAI Authorization Act would authorize EPA to establish a program to investigate, evaluate, and support processes, methods, and systems for (i) identifying sources of critical minerals at contaminated sites (e.g., contaminated media and solid wastes), and (ii) recovering the critical minerals from such materials/sites. The program would be limited to 10 years, with outlays capped at $10 million per fiscal year and $3 million for any individual grant recipient.

H.R. 9617: The Coordinating and Harnessing America’s Recovery of Minerals (CHARM) Act

The CHARM Act would direct the EPA Administrator, in consultation with the heads of other federal agencies, to develop and implement a National Critical Mineral Recovery Strategy to coordinate federal efforts to recover critical minerals from discarded materials. The strategy would consider opportunities to expand critical mineral recovery and the legal, technological, and other barriers to such recovery. The bill would also direct EPA to report to Congress every two years on activities carried out under the strategy. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would cost $1 million over five years, subject to the availability of appropriated funds.