SB5492 – Requires Ecology to develop a program for collecting, managing, and recycling wind turbine blades, paid for by the manufacturers.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Jeff Wilson (R; 19th District; Southwest Washington)
Current status – Scheduled for a hearing in Environment, Energy & Technology Wednesday January 19th at 8:00 AM.
Next step would be – Action by the committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –

According to a recent Bloomberg article 85% of the steel, copper, electronics, and gearing in the turbines themselves can be recycled or reused, but the fiberglass blades “can’t easily be crushed, recycled or repurposed.” (One company presses them into pellets and uses them in fiber board.) They’re a tiny part of the state’s waste stream; the Electric Power Research Institute estimates that all blade waste through 2050 will equal roughly .015% of all the waste going to landfills in 2015 alone. It isn’t at all clear that the life-cycle carbon footprint of recycling them won’t be larger than just landfilling them. Perhaps the bill is intended to create business for some company or organization, or make wind projects more expensive, but the time, energy, and money it will take to do this might well be better spent on many other kinds of waste that we could actually recycle or reuse effectively, or on other kinds of climate action projects altogether…

The bill’s a revised version of Senator Wilson’s SB5174, which died in the Senate Rules Committee last session. It currently requires stewardship plans to be submitted by July 1, 2024, even though Ecology isn’t required to have finished the guidance for them until January 1, 2024.

Summary –
The bill requires Ecology to develop “guidance” for a program for collecting, managing, and recycling wind turbine blades by January 2024. It’s supposed to be a “self-directed” program, and is supposed to be implemented and paid for by their manufacturers, but it must be based on one or more stewardship organizations operating and implementing as agents on their behalf, and it has to be approved by Ecology. (“Manufacturers” are defined to include retailers and importers of blades; they would be allowed to participate in an approved national program instead, if there were one Ecology determined has requirements substantially equivalent to the State’s.)

Plans must describe how manufacturers will finance the system and include an adequate funding mechanism ensuring blades can be delivered without cost to the last owner or holder to takeback locations within the region in which they were used and that are as convenient as reasonably practicable; accept all blades sold in or into Washington after July 1, 2024; identify how stakeholders including installers, demolition firms, and recycling and treatment facilities will receive information needed to properly dismantle, transport, and treat the blades; and establish performance goals, including one for reusing and recycling at least 85% of the weight of collected blades.

There are reporting requirements, fees to cover Ecology’s administrative costs, and penalties on manufacturers of up to $10,000 a blade (after an initial warning) for each sale or installation of one without an approved stewardship plan. (The bill prohibits installations, and provides for issuing warnings to installers, but it only applies penalties to manufacturers.)