SB6622 – Retains the photovoltaic product stewardship program and requires a report on a comprehensive alternate.
Prime Sponsor – Senator Das (D; 47th District; Kent)
Current status – Had a hearing in the Senate Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology January 22nd. Substitute passed out of committee February 6th; referred to Ways and Means.
Next step would be – Dead bill.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.

Comments –
HB2389 proposes an almost identical task force but it repeals the current law rather than leaving it in place.

The findings say that the PV product stewardship program the Legislature created in 2017 through SB5939, which passed with large majorities in both houses, has “created uncertainty for manufacturers who may cease to sell panels in the state.” (The only problem it mentions is that the current system only applies to small system panels sold after July 2017, so it’s unclear what will happen to earlier panels and ones from larger systems; they apparently say they’re worried about ending up with two sets of requirements.)

The House committee substitute merely changes the bill’s title to “Investigating a comprehensive, statewide photovoltaic module recovery, reuse, recycling, and end-of-life program,” instead of “Establishing…”

Summary –
The bill would require the Department of Ecology to appoint a stakeholders’ task force to develop recommendations by December 1, 2021 for financing and managing the recovery, reuse, and recycling of photovoltaic modules and their components (and for disposing of the remaining materials).

This bill adds reviewing programs in other countries to the new task force’s work, and adds several more specified members to it. It tidies up the language of the current photovoltaic module stewardship and takeback law, but it leaves that in place while the recommendations are being developed.