U.S. Environmental Laws Impact Critical Supply Chains, National Security, Growth

The committee will come to order. Before we begin our official hearing, I wanna yield uh to the gentleman from New York, Mister Taco, for a point of personal privilege.

Thank you, Mister Chair. Um, I, along with so many, was so very sad last week to hear about the passing of our former colleague, Representative David McKinley. Um, David was the consummate legislator and a tremendous human being. He um had so many interests and we bonded over both being engineers and enjoyed that work together um here on the subcommittee. We served as the leadership team, Ranker uh chair and then Ranker for me and um you know there were certainly policy disagreements that we had, but there were places also of common interest and uh concern and we uh worked tirelessly to move issues along in that capacity. Um many great efforts over the years promoting energy efficiency, addressing opioid addiction, uh providing hope for people with rare diseases, uh preserving our heritage areas, and uh many more. Most of all I I'll recall and always remember how much he loved his district. Um we hosted each other in our respective congressional districts and he welcomed me into his home as a colleague and i believe as a friend and uh you know he fought for his constituents for his area for this country and um i really respect that uh i extend my deepest deepest consoling condolences to his widow mary and their family and uh may he rest in peace with them Mister Chair, I yield back.

Well, thank the gentleman uh for that and I too um appreciated his service. He was uh a mining engineer and I worked uh, as I've said, for a couple of engineering companies. And he was one of these quiet guys that got a lot done. So if um if we may uh we'll just take a moment of silence and then we'll begin our hearing. Subcommittee on Environment will now come to order. The chair recognizes himself for an opening statement. Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us for today's very important hearing about how US environmental laws impact critical mineral supply chains, our national security and economic growth. Our country has a rich bounty of natural resources and for most of the twentieth century the United States was the leader in producing and refining critical minerals however the past several decades China has aggressively sought to dominate the global market for critical minerals, with dire consequences for our national security. China is now responsible for almost exclusively producing about two dozen critical minerals that our national security and defense depend on. And most of the so-called black mass that is recovered from lithium ion batteries is shipped back to China for recycling. Today, April twenty-second, is recognized as Earth Day. It is fitting that we are discussing how the move of critical supply chains to China has coincided with the enactment of multiple environmental laws in the US where we have seen improvements in our environment but at what cost to our manufacturing economy and national security. President Trump has issued several executive orders focus the federal government's attention on these risk and to have all departments and agencies working together to reshore the domestic critical mineral mining and processing supply chains. My bill, H R forty-three seventy, the Securing America's Mineral Supply Act, would codify these policies to support domestic critical minerals, mining and processing. As we on the Energy and Commerce Committee consider legislative reforms to the Toxic Substance Control Act and the Resource Conservation Recovery Act and other environmental laws, We should work together to find solutions to support the reshoring of the entire critical mineral supply chain. It will make little sense for us to support increased critical mineral mining in the US, if we are not also supporting the other parts of the supply chain, from the manufacture of the chemicals and energy needed to process critical minerals to the facilities needed to recover and recycle these valuable commodities on the black end, on the back end. Given our broad jurisdiction, The Energy and Commerce Committee is well positioned to advance common sense legislative reforms to ensure that the United States has the tools it needs to both produce and process critical minerals in this country. We have an excellent panel with us today to discuss the challenges in securing domestic supply chains for critical minerals. First, we have Mr. Chris Lehman, the Chief Development Officer for Principal Mineral, which is working to build out the domestic supply chain for critical minerals. Mr. Lehman served as the Director of the Defense Production Act's title three program during the first Trump administration, and helped to set up the office of strategic capital. Second, we have Doctor M- uh, Bea Spiller, a fellow and and the Transportation Program Director with resources for the future. Next, we will hear from Jane Neal, Senior Vice President for AMG uh, Vanadium, which is working to secure domestic supply chain for Vanadium, a critical mineral that is used to harden steel and in a variety of aerospace Finally, we'll hear from Josh uh Grubkin, Associate General Counsel for Redwood Materials, which works to recover critical minerals from used batteries. Mister Grubkin has decades of experience as a lawyer and consultant in working on complicated chemical safety and recycling issues. Thank you all for being here. The chair now recognizes the ranking member of the subcommittee, the gentleman from New York, Mister Tocco, for five minutes for an opening statement.

Thank you, Mister Chair, and happy Earth Day to everyone. I can remember that first Earth Day in nineteen seventy, when Americans, especially young people, came together to celebrate our shared home and to raise awareness for the need to better protect it. Back then, we had big problems threatening our public health and our economy. Rivers on fire, thick smog poisoning our lungs, and PCBs dumped into our waterways. It is not hard to understand why bipartisan majorities in Congress have worked together to address these issues and no one can deny the success of the laws born out of that moment. But today we face another generation of environmental threats, climate change, PFAS and plastic waste, to name a few. So as we gather together on this Earth Day, rather than examine how we can work together to solve these challenges, majority would prefer to discuss how our successful legacy environmental laws are failing us. That is the completely wrong approach, I believe, to frame a conversation that I truly believe is worth having. Critical materials are indeed important. We need more of them. We should be seeking to reduce our reliance on unreliable foreign supply chains that may have security or ethical concerns. We should be promoting ways to raise the bar for environmental labor and human rights standards, to ensure that these materials are sourced responsibly, regardless of where the c- extraction and processing occurs. When we enter into bilateral mineral agreements, We should be requiring foreign nations to raise their standards to match ours, rather than having Congress consider how to lower our standards to match these competitors. It is why I have long called for increasing the transparency and traceability of our critical material supply chains to identify problems with overseas minerals, and to hold bad actors accountable. I have no reason to doubt the motivations of members of the majority. I believe that they believe promoting more secure critical mineral supply chains, is a national security and economic competitiveness imperative. But if that is true, then those members should be much more willing to embrace policy priorities supported by House Democrats, meeting us halfway on areas where we can agree to legislate meaningful and, yes, durable policy. Unfortunately, over the past sixteen months, we have witnessed congressional Republicans and the Trump administration repeal major incentives and regulations that were already working to induce demand for domestic critical materials. That includes the Republicans' repeal of the thirty D clean vehicle tax credit, which derived up to one half of its value from a vehicle's use of an American-made battery with compliant mineral components. Additionally, the Trump administration has terminated hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to domestic battery manufacturers. The uncertainty that has been created by these decisions has resulted in the cancellation tens of billions of dollars of private sector investments, intended to build a domestic clean energy industry to compete with China. These ideological driven actions are making our supply chain vulnerabilities worse, plain and simple. Instead, we will still consider this majority's um preferred solution to every industrial challenge repealing our nation's environmental and public health laws. It is tiresome, it is not getting us any closer, to enacting meaningful or durable federal policy. So instead, I would recommend that we have a conversation about how federal laws can play a constructive role in achieving our shared goals. In my view, that could start with a national extended producer responsibility program for lithium ion batteries and E waste. Every expert agrees that recycling can address a significant part of our needs. Once we have gone through the troublesome efforts of importing critical materials, by imposing collection, reuse and recycling requirements, we can ensure that those materials stay here in the United States, and displace the need for additional imports in the future. I will not suggest that negotiating such a bill would be easy. Doing serious legislative work never is. But we need to start somewhere. And the sooner we can move past the notion that simply waiving environmental protections will single-handedly unleash our domestic critical mineral industry, the sooner we can begin work on policies where we may be able to find common ground. So on this Earth Day, I want to again encourage us to consider just how the next generation of environmental laws can play a role in addressing some of the biggest public health and economic threats facing our nation just as those members did back in nineteen seventy and uh the seventies that followed. With that, I thank you, Mister Chair, and yield back.

Thanks, gentlemen. Um. The chair will recognize the chairman of the health subcommittee, mister Morgan, to give an opening statement on behalf of the chairman of the full committee, mister Guthrie.

Thank you, mister chairman, I appreciate it, uh, chairman Guthrie is uh tied up on the floor, so I will be reading his opening statement to the committee that he previously drafted. Good afternoon, and thank you to our witnesses, and thank you, chairman Palmer, for holding this hearing. I just wanna take a minute to recognize my friend. And I can say this along with Brett, my friend, the gentleman from Alabama, for his leadership on critical mineral issues and for sounding the alarm that our national security and economic prosperity are at risk if we do not have reliable, domestic sources for these important materials. Winning the race to AI dominance will depend not only on having access to critical minerals that go into semiconductors and other advanced technologies, but also on access to the chemicals needed to manufacture refine and recover these critical minerals in the United States rather than having to rely on China. Many of our nation's environmental laws were enacted more than fifty years ago, and have not kept pace with the current economic and geopolitical conditions. The Energy and Commerce Committee is leading the way in working to modernize the Toxic Substances Control Act, TSCA, and other environmental laws so that we can meet the challenges posed by China and other countries, while also continuing to protect our environment. Even though Tosca was updated ten years ago, it has become clear that the law is not working as needed. We need to maintain a strong manufacturing base in the United States, and that includes the ability to manufacture our own chemicals and produce other critical materials, all of which are essential for national defense and economic security. I look forward to hearing from our panel of witnesses on their experiences navigating these laws and their ideas for how we can regulate, excuse me, how we can reduce regulatory burdens and continue to have a healthy environment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.

Thanks, gentlemen. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Doctor Ruiz, to give an opening statement on behalf of the of the uh ranking member for the full committee, Mr. Pilon, recognized for five minutes.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, these are the remarks of uh ranking member Frank Pilon. On this Earth Day, I would like to take a moment to commemorate our bedrock environmental laws that keep our air clean our drinking water safe and our lands free of contamination. Despite what the title of this hearing implies, we do not have to choose between growing our economy and preserving the planet. Our country's most fundamental environmental public health laws help us lower energy costs and boost our economy, all while combating pollution and the climate crisis. As it relates to the topic of today's hearing, it is possible to show up our critical material supply chains without compromising those same environmental and public health protections. Democrats support the responsible and sustainable build out of our domestic critical m- material supply chains. It's important for our energy, economic and national security and necessary for the clean energy transition. That is why Democrats secured important down payments in the bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation reduction act. Together, these laws included billions of dollars in federal investments to strengthen our critical material supply chains, create jobs, boost American manufacturing, and lower costs for hardworking families. For example, the bipartisan infrastructure law included point nine billion dollar dollars for battery materials processing, manufacturing and recycling. It also directed the EPA to develop best practices for battery collection and voluntary labeling guidelines to help grow our circular economy for critical mineral materials. The Inflation Reduction Act included tax credits for electric vehicles, domestic or ally-sourced critical materials for batteries, and domestic battery manufacturing expand our capacity and boost our supply chain resiliency. Instead of building on this important work, Republicans have taken a wrecking ball to many of these important demand drivers. They have canceled clean energy projects, programs, and incentives, and in the process destroyed downstream manufacturing that is an essential facet to bolstering critical material supply chains. For example, due to the Republican attacks, clean vehicle and battery projects, projects accounted for more than twenty one billion dollars in lost investment in twenty twenty five. Needlessly, dampening demand for critical minerals would jeopardize our ability to attract and grow domestic critical material operations. Republicans continue to talk about the very threat from China, but their policies are misaligned. The rest of the world, particularly China, is investing in the clean energy and com- economy. more so now after Trump's war in Iran. China has created a vertically integrated model centered on supply and demand for clean energy technologies like solar and batteries, giving them a stranglehold over the world's downstream, midstream and upstream supply chain for critical materials. If we wanna get serious about combating China's dominance over the critical material supply chain Republicans and the Trump administrations need to stop their assault on homegrown clean energy. Their clean energy rollbacks undermine our efforts to lead the global clean energy transition, leaving the world to rely on China for critical minerals, and exposing us to geopolitical supply chain risks. To change this dynamic, we need a strong domestic market for clean energy technologies, so that companies are willing to make long-term investments in this sector. Instead of scapegoating environmental laws, Congress must build on democratic investments to create a domestic market for critical minerals, bolster domestic supply chains, create jobs, and fuel a clean energy economy. We must also strengthen our domestic capabilities to reduce our reliance on foreign sources. We must grow and cement our relationships with our friends and allies abroad, to develop and access new critical mineral supply chains, also known as " friend-shoring". The United States must invest in the processing of critical materials and battery recycling to increase the domestic supply of these resources, and we must rely on and invest in American ingenuity in creating innovative solutions that reduce the need for extraction like innovative battery chemistries. I welcome a productive conversation today about strengthening our critical materials supply chains, but Democrats will not entertain the idea that we must roll back important environmental protections to do so. Thank you, Mister Chairman, and with that, I yield back the balance of the time.

Thank you, gentlemen. We now conclude with member opening statements. The chair would like to remind members that pursuant to the committee rules, all members' opening statements will be made part of the record. We want to thank our witnesses for being here today and taking time to testify before the subcommittee. The witnesses will have the opportunity to give an opening statement followed by a round of questions From the members, our witnesses for today are Chris Lehman, Chief Development Officer, Principal Mineral, Doctor Baez-Piller, Fellow and Transportation Program Director, Resources for the Future, Jane Neal, Senior Vice President, AMG, Abunatium, and Josh Gupkin, Associate General Counsel, Redwood Materials. We appreciate you being here today. I now recognize Mister Lehman for five minutes to give an opening statement.

Chairman Palmer, Ranking Member Tomko, members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I serve as the Chief Development Officer of Principal Mineral, a mission-focused strategic materials platform dede- dedicated to forging resilient US supply chains. I have the privilege to work with a team of patriots operating at the intersection of capital markets, scaled industrial development, and strategic materials supply chains essential to our national and economic security. My motivation to execute our mission at Principal Mineral comes from my prior service in government at the Pentagon. I served as the Director of the Defense Production Act Title Three pro- program focused on addressing key shortfalls in the domestic, industrial base. I also served as the Deputy Director of the Office of Strategic Capital, which utilizes debt-based investment tools to attract and scale private capital investment into critical supply chains for national security. In both of these jobs, strategic material supply chains and the strategic risks, posed to our nation by the glaring gaps within them were front and center. The first point I'd like to make is that strategic materials, be it critical chemicals, rare earths, copper, or a multitude of others, are not only foundational for the defense industrial base, but for the entire modern economy. US leadership in these markets will be essential to shaping our nation's long-term economic competitiveness and resilience. Strategic materials are embedded in nearly every sector driving growth today. energy infrastructure, advanced electronics, telecommunications, transportation, and artificial intelligence. The scale of dependence is significant. According to the US Geological Survey, the US relies on imports for over half of its supply of more than forty critical minerals, and is fully import dependent for at least a dozen. Inputs like copper, rare earth elements, and specialty metals are essential to cost everything from data centers, to grid systems, to consumer technologies. At the same time, global markets for these materials are often characterized by concentrated production, limited transparency, and periods of significant price volatility. In industries where projects require billions of dollars and years to develop, that volatility has real consequences. When future pricing and supply conditions are difficult to model, the cost of cap- the cost of capital raises, investment slows, and production capacity does not get built. Second, strengthening these supply chains requires a coordinated, system-wide approach, not isolated, policy actions. The core challenge is not simply resource availability. It is whether the U. S. can create the conditions under which capital will be committed to building industrial capacity across the value chain and at scale. That depends on alignment across several interconnected factors. Regulatory clarity in permitting timelines, aligning policy tools to support long-term investment, access to long duration, patient capital, coordination across supply chain segments, and consistency in environmental and operating standards. When these elements work together, investment becomes viable, timelines compress, and capacity grows. When they are misaligned, projects stall, even when demand is strong and technology is proven. Third, regulatory clarity and consistent environmental standards are central to enabling that system and to attracting long-term investment. The United States should maintain strong environmental protections. That is essential for public trust and long-term sustainability. But from the perspective of developers and investors, the defining issue is predictability. Today, regulatory processes are often fragmented across agencies, timelines are uncertain, and outcomes can vary. When regulatory pathways are clear and consistently applied, investors are willing to commit long-duration capital. When they are not, Project projects are delayed or do not move forward at all. At the same time, consistent environmental and labor standards, both domestically and across allied supply chains, ensure that growth does not come at the expense of responsible production. They also help prevent a shift of activity to jurisdictions with weaker protections, which ultimately undermines both environmental and economic objectives. Finally, innovation and commercialization will determine whether the U. S. The U S has competitive advantages in research and development and the deepest, most trusted and liquid capital markets in the world, the markets that can fund the transition from R and D to commercialized innovation and industrial capacity. Policymakers have the opportunity to set positive conditions that will unleash these competitive advantages to build the strategic material supply chains our nation needs. In closing, leadership in strategic materials markets will be determined not by any signal signal project or initiative, but by the strength and coherence of the overall system. The US has a clear opportunity to lead. If the system is aligned, capital will flow, capacity will be built, and the US can establish dur- durable leadership in these sectors for decades to come. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. The chair now recognizes Doctor Spiller for five minutes.

Chairman Palmer, Ranking Member Tonko, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Bea Spiller. I'm a Fellow in Transportation Program Director at Resources for the Future. The views I'm expressing today are my own. Building a domestic critical min- mineral supply chain is challenging, and the difficulty is not explained by any single factor. In my remarks today, I'll cover four key barriers to scaling domestic key domestic supply. address why weakening environmental safeguards won't solve them, and discuss four policy options that can support the me- the domestic industry while still protecting communities. So let's talk about the barriers to building a domestic critical mineral supply chain. First, it's more expensive to extract and process minerals in the United States than in other region, in part because key inputs, like labor, electricity, and construction materials, cost more here. And while environmental regulations can raise costs, they're generally not the primary cost driver. Second, domestic producers face global prices that are often low and frequently volatile. This creates an investment risk that domestic domestic producers cannot control. And importantly, low prices are often artificially low because they ref- reflect unpriced environmental and labor harms of production. When those harms are not internalized, the global price signal undercuts firms that are trying to operate responsibly. Third, permitting times are long, but the evidence suggests that eliminating community engagement to speed up timelines is not a shortcut. In fact, reduced engagement can increase the likelihood of litigation after permits are issued, potentially lis- lengthening timelines rather than shortening them. And fourth, we have a workforce and know-how challenge. After decades of limited domestic activity, we have gaps in trained labor and institutional expertise. Capacity constraints show up in industry, and recent staffing shortages in federal agencies reduce the government's ab- ability to support mapping, permitting, regulatory review, and innovation. Given these barriers, weakening environmental protections will not create a viable domestic supply chain. The binding constraints are larger and more structural, and these include cost differentials, price volatility, missing skills and capacity, and long development timelines. But beyond that, environmental safeguards are part of the competitive advantage of producing here, in that they help ensure that the supply chain is sustainable and socially legitimate. And well-designed environmental rules can encourage innovation, including process improvements that can reduce emissions and sometimes even reduce costs. Strong standards can support workforce recruitment and retention, Because people are more likely to live and work where air and water are clean and safety risks are managed. Finally, healthier environments means a healthier workforce, reducing illness and absenteeism, and increasing company productivity. But, for these laws to support rather than hinder the development of the supply chain, we need strong governance. And that means a well-staffed and well-funded public workforce that can implement the rules consistently and without unnecessary delays. So the question really comes down to what are the policies that can most effectively move the needle to support the development of a domestic mineral supply chain. So first, let's imp focus on improving permitting efficiency, not by skipping steps but by running better processes. And this can include stronger inter-agency coordination and more concurrent reviews. Second, let's invest in workforce and technical capacity. And this includes things like state and regional training initiatives, targeted support for higher education, and ensuring federal agencies have the staffing they need to support the industry and implement laws effectively. Third, let's invest in R and D and commercialization. Innovation can lower costs, reduce environmental impacts, and make the US more competitive. And finally, let's focus on connecting the upstream with the downstream demand in the supply chain. If downstream manufacturers have stable expectations of demand, they can invest and enter into off-take agreements that provide long-term price and demand certainty for upstream mineral producers. Those agreements reduce risks on both sides of the supply chain, helping to stabilize domestic markets and supporting manufacturing jobs nationwide. In short, building a domestic mineral supply chain rec- recogni- requires recognizing its true constraints. Policies like permitting improvements, workforce investment, innovation support, and strong demand linkages are likely to do more to grow domestic supply than weakening environmental safeguards, and they can do so while protecting communities and supporting long-term competitiveness. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. The chair now recognizes Miss Niel for five minutes.

Thank you, Chairman Palmer, Ranking Member Tonko, and members of this subcommittee for the opportunity to testify today. I'm Jane Neal, Senior Vice President at AMG Vanadium, an Ohio-based manufacturer. AMG Vanadium is the only domestic producer of ferrovanadium, supplying approximately forty percent of the U S market for this critical mineral that is essential to steelmaking for infrastructure, energy, transportation, and defense. The balance of U S demand is imported with seventy-five percent of global production concentrated in Russia and China. AMG recycles petroleum refinery waste to reclaim vanadium, but we are not merely a waste processor. We are a critical minerals company and a strategic domestic manufacturer. In twenty twenty-two, AMG commissioned a three hundred million dollar facility to expand capacity to upwards of seventy-five percent of US demand. Meanwhile, others are exporting the same material for vanadium reclamation overseas including to Asia. Despite this, current interpretations of the RCRA regulations threaten AMG's ability to operate after twenty thirty-one. Approximately ninety percent of vanadium is used in steelmaking, which is AMG vanadium's principal market. The remaining ten percent is used as vanadium oxide, including in growing applications as electrolyte in large scale energy storage that supports renewable energy. The RCRA language that AMG operates under uses vague terms such as legitimate recycling, leaving regulated companies subject to the interpretation of regulators. For more than twenty years, Ohio EPA has issued variances, recognizing AMG's operations as legitimate recycling. Those variances have long enabled AMG to operate safely and lawfully in this environment of duplicative and vague regulations. The issue arose when EPA Region five staff adopted interpretations that differed from the past twenty years. In twenty nineteen, AMG received a variance issued by Ohio EPA after US EPA Region five review. This allowed AMG to begin construction on the three hundred million dollar expansion facility. After operations commenced, US EPA reversed its position, advising Ohio EPA that AMG's rep- operations did not represent legitimate recycling. They directed Ohio EPA to revoke AMG's variances, which would have left the company unable to operate. Under pressure from then-Senator Brown and Ohio EPA, Region five settled on a position not to allow renewal of the variances after twenty thirty-one. The core problem is a lack of clarity in the RICRA regulations not a lack of environmental controls. Ohio has ensured that the variance is as protective of human health and the environment as a permit, yet changing interpretations by federal staff now threaten AMG's operations. RCRA needs clarification and modernization, not weakening. The law should clearly support the safe domestic recycling of spent petroleum catalysts for critical mineral recovery and distinguish legitimate domestic recyclers from disposal operations. And it should remove duplicative regulations where other programs, including the Clean Air Act, already provide protection. The principle is simple. RCRA should favor recycling when human health and environmental protection are maintained. While AMG's position is supported by the Region five administrator, administrative interpretations are not durable. National interests cannot depend on shifting agency views. Endurance comes from statutory clarity. AMG has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to recycle hazardous waste into valuable materials without environmental harm, processing over five hundred thousand tons of spent catalyst and recovering over fifty million pounds of vanadium. Modernizing RCRA would protect environmental goals while advancing strategic, economic, and national security interests. Congress should ensure that legitimate recycling is encouraged, valuable materials remain domestic, an ambiguous language cannot be used against responsible recyclers. RCRA should allow variances and exemptions to work together and eliminate duplicative overlap where other environmental programs already improve, impose protective controls. The Spent Catalyst Recycling and Critical Minerals and Metals Recovery Act, introduced earlier this year by Representative Troy Balderson and Senator John Husted provide such language. Thank you again for this opportunity and for your consideration of the impact of these regulations on the companies operating under them.

Thank you. The chair now recognizes Mister Gubkin for five minutes from opening statement.

Chairman Guthrie, Palmer, Ranking Member Tonko, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Josh Gubkin. I serve as Associate General Counsel at Redwood Materials, founded by J. B. Straubel. co-founder and former CTO of Tesla. Redwood is building the first fully integrated US-based battery supply chain. Roughly ninety percent of all domestically recycled lithium ion batteries are processed through our facilities making us the largest lithium ion battery recycler in North America we recover on average ninety eight percent of critical minerals from end of life batteries our operations represent the first commercial scale nickel mine to open in the US in a decade the only new commercial scale of domestic lithium in decades, and the largest US source of cobalt. Our operations set the standard for what domestic recycling should look like. Redwoods' approach spans the full battery life cycle. We repurpose batteries that still have useful life for grid scale energy storage. We recycle batteries that have reached end of life to recover their critical minerals. And we refine those minerals and manufacture new battery components, including cathode active material. the most expensive component in a new battery. That's done with zero um fossil fuels, zero industrial discharge, and with an air emission permit that's akin to those at hospitals and hotels. End of life batteries are not an environmental problem. They are a strategic resource that can be reinvested into the next generation of American industry. The title of this hearing asks whether our environmental laws help or hinder critical mineral supply chains. These laws were different, written for a different era, before the lithium ion battery industry existed. Applied to today's materials and processes, they are producing outcomes that no one intended, pushing investment, manufacturing, and critical mineral recovery offshore rather than keeping them within our borders. Two EPA legal frameworks are at the center of this problem, RCRA and TSCA. Both need to be modernized to reflect current technology and market realities, and to align with the goals this committee and the am- administration are pursuing. Under RCRA, EPA classifies used lithium ion batteries as hazardous waste. That classification forces domestic recyclers into a permitting process that can take years to complete. It's a death knell for innovation. Or, it requires us to store batteries at a physically separate location from where we process. Batteries must be unloaded and reloaded and trucked on a public road from one property to the next. This creates more risk, not less. China reclassified these same materials as non-waste raw material last year, and now controls more than eighty percent of global lithium ion recycling capacity. The EU went the other direction, classified black mass as hazardous waste, and is already seeing investor flight and cancelled projects. The United States is on track to make the same mistake. Under TASCA, the EPA treats each modified cathode material as an entirely new chemical substance. triggering a review process that's supposed to take ninety days, but in practice takes over a year. It's followed by a second rulemaking that adds months or years more. Total time to market regularly exceeds three years. The message to manufacturers is simple. Build overseas and import the finished product. TASCA also punishes recyclers. Restrictions imposed by EPA under TASCA prevent new variants of battery materials from domestic distribution. Consequently, a domestic recycler cannot distribute the material it recovers within the United States. As a result, critical minerals are exported. That is the exact opposite of what this committee is trying to achieve. These batteries also impact energy storage. Many end-of-life EV batteries retain up to eighty percent of their usable capacity. Through Redwood Energy, we d- deploy the largest second-life battery m- material installation in the world. Uh, but EPA's framework creates uncertainty about whether they're waste when they first leave a vehicle, hindering the entire repurposing industry when demand from data centers and AI is surging. Our ask is straightforward. First, enact a national lithium ion battery manage act that creates a unified federal framework. Second, use EPA rulemaking to exclude lithium ion batteries and battery materials destined for repurposing or recycling, from the definition of solid waste. Third, reform TSCA's treatment Cathode materials so domestic manufacturers and recyclers are not penalized for operating in the US. And fourth, mandate inter-agency alignment so EPA works towards the same goals as other agencies in this committee. The materials are in the US, the technology is in the US, the investment is ready. What we need is a regulatory framework that prior- prioritizes these critical materials for what they are, strategic assets. Thank you. I welcome your questions.

I thank our witnesses for their opening statements. The chair now recognizes the chairman of the full committee, the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky, Mister Guthrie, for five minutes for his questions.

Thank you. Thank you for calling me. I appreciate the recognition and I wanna start with, I know we're talking about critical minerals and mining. Uh, one of the great mining engineers to serve in Congress was a a dear friend of all of ours, David McKinley. And David McKinley passed away last week and I think his funeral is this Monday. He was a colleague and he loved this subcommittee. He was very uh important to this subcommittee. And he's someone that we'll all miss. His dear wife Miriam, who li who was here with him quite often, and so we got to know her as well. Uh our I'll just think I can speak for everybody on the the committee and the subcommittee that that he was a a dear man and his thoughts and our thoughts and prayers are with him and his fa his his wife and his family because we're certainly gonna Miss him. He still kinda kept in touch with a lot of us, so we really appreciated that. And um, you know, the earth's a little less today because Dave McKinley's not with us anymore. And he certainly loved West Virginia. He loved uh what he did, and he knew that that the minerals of this uh world were important, and were important to what we are able to use for our country. So uh uh God bless him. God bless the McKinleys. So, Mr. McGubkin, um and you, Gubkin? Is it Gubkin or Gupkin, uh in your testimony you described a complicated regulatory framework that your company Redwood Materials has to navigate in order to recycle and recover critical minerals from batteries one of the challenge we've heard about TSCA is that even slight variations of an existing chemical have to undergo a full risk review how do you so the question is how do you think allowing EPA to group together similar equivalent chemicals for expedited risk reviews would improve the process and provide more certain data manufacturers.

Uh, thank you for your question. And, uh, I think it will speed things up, first of all, because, uh, to use an analogy, you have various shades of green. You have deep green, light green, emerald, sea green. These are all green. They're just slight variations of the same thing. And so, if instead, TSCA were to group these, and work through the science to, uh, determine the protections for them as green, they can do this as a class. Should be a quicker one, and so a quicker process, closer to the ninety days that they're supposed to. And in addition to that, once they've made that determination for green, it covers all green. So you don't have to go through it again and again for each process. This is actually similar to what they do in Europe under reach. So this isn't something that's new or novel, but it is something that makes sense.

As such, as an avid recycler myself, I I'm I'm known to pull aluminum cans out of the garbage, not because I collect them to sell, I turn them in because either they go in the ground or they go back in the stream of commerce and why don't we want them back in the my family's in the aluminum business so I figure the more aluminum that exists the the cheaper aluminum is gonna be for everybody and so uh and and it's it saves from putting them in the ground which is a is a waste and so we need to make it easier for people to recycle we need to make it uh and particularly these these critical minerals that we have So also, Mister Gubkin, in your testimony you discussed how EPA requirements are not often not aligned with safety standards issued by OSHA and other regulatory bodies. Can you briefly describe your workplace safety practice and how conflicting regulatory requirements can present challenges for your workers and potentially impact say I think both agencies want them to be safe, but sometimes they conflict and how to could you give us an example?

Y yeah, so you know, I think the the example to use really is between going back to TSCA, uh, what you have from that organization going and putting restrictions for safety on one company versus another and them not being aligned, even though it's the same materials.

Mm-hmm.

And that can be different from what OSHA has done, who has the delegated scope for protecting employees. And so you have three different things that possibly you're looking at. And just as an example with uh LFP, um, you have restrictions that come out based on TSCA, uh, where the filter protection that you have for the manufacture of it is one tenth the protection for the recyclers using the same material from the same comp- that come down from the same company. There's really no rationale beyond that. It doesn't provide, uh, any added protection for the workers, it's just provides added cost and added problems for the recycler. And so, why aren't these aligned? And moreover, why is an OSHA who has the ability and the mandate to go and find these levels of protection, have them do the work uh on that so that we have a consistent framework from state to state across the nation for how we protect our employees.

Thank you. I don't have uh much time left, so I'll just leave it this, is that I was just on the floor of the house and they announced the passing of David Scott. I think all of us are aware of that now. And again, just like with our dear, dear friend David McKinley, uh David Scott, his wife was Hank Aaron's sister. So Hank Aaron was his brother-in-law and he used to, we used to I was growing up a Braves family. That was kind of our connection. He would talk about all the the issues that Hank Aaron had to go through. And I can tell you uh, to when he moved to Atlanta to play uh play baseball and I tell you the whole whole world was cheering for him in nineteen seventy four. So it was uh amazing what that family has brought in into our country, and particularly David Scott and his service. So our thoughts and prayers are with Miss Mrs. Scott and uh the Scott family. So thank you.

Uh thanks gentlemen. The chair now recognizes the ranking member of the of the committee, Mister Tonko, for five minutes.

Thank you, Mister Chair. Doctor uh Spiller, I want to associate myself with your testimony that uh securing our critical mineral supply chains is a complex multifaceted issue that does not need to come at the expense of our environmental laws. We heard from a few witnesses that the recycling of critical minerals can play an important role in s securing domestic supplies. And there may be uh may very well be definitional and regulatory barriers that make recycling more challenging. Doctor Spiller, as a first-order issue, can you give us a sense of the potential for recycling to play a role in reducing our dependence on foreign supply chains?

So

It's a great question. Uh, we have limited, um, material here right now in terms of just the quantity of, you know, batteries and black mass to really make a huge dent currently. Uh, obviously as, uh, EV demand ramps up, the more electric vehicles we buy and, uh, you know, turn over, over the years we will have the ability to uh reduce our our dependence on foreign sources. But currently we don't just don't have a huge amount of mass to to really make a dent in it right now.

Thank you. And and your testimony mentioned that there were incentives and regulations in the forms of the thirty G clean vehicle tax credit and EPA's GHG tailpipe rule, which have now been repealed, that were structured to further induce investments in and demand for domestic critical minerals, including recycled minerals. Is that correct?

I'm I'm sorry I c- I'm having a hard time hearing you. Could you repeat the question?

Sure. The um the the uh incentives and regulations uh that were in the form of the thirty G clean vehicle tax credit and EPA's GHG tailpipe rule which have now been repealed were structured to further induce investments in in demand for domestic critical minerals. including uh recycled minerals is that correct

yes that's correct

so is it fair to say that well designed federal policies whether that's incentives or environmental regulations can actually promote our domestic critical mineral goals

absolutely um these the thirty d tax credit i think was uh really great option and was a really great policy because what it did was at the same time that it created this this really increased demand for the electric vehicles. It tied the sourcing of the minerals. Um, it's it tied the the demand for the electric vehicles to domestic sourcing of of the minerals themselves. So in order to be able to get the tax credit, the minerals in the batteries had to come either from domestic sources or from friendly nations. So that led to, um, a lot of, you know, offtake agreements, uh, with, um, domestic um lithium producers so by tying the the demand the demand side to the to the upstream it created um you know a really strong base for our supply chain.

well the national extended producer responsibility the epr requirement the safe repurposing recycling and disposal of batteries was a good strong incentive the infrastructure investment in jobs act required epr to develop such a framework and I have been pleased that this effort has continued under the current Trump administration. So, Doctor Spiller, could a national program like this, where battery manufacturers are responsible for a standardized system supporting the collection, recovery, repurposing and recycling of batteries help achieve our goals of reusing critical minerals and reducing risks of exporting minerals that have already entered the US economy?

I'm not an expert on that. policy i don't really know much about that so i can't speak that directly but any sort of policy that requires the collection of the batteries themselves for recycling um i think would be probably a a pretty good policy to help, you know, insure that we're continuing to collect the material needed to to you know shore up the supply chain.