Sponsors (2)
The bill broadens renewable eligibility to include recovered waste heat and pressure—helping many facilities cut waste and access incentives and new markets—but may leave some hybrid projects excluded, increase competition for limited USDA funds, and impose significant upfront costs on owners without guaranteed federal funding.
Owners of industrial, commercial, and residential facilities can use captured waste heat/pressure to generate on-site power, reducing energy waste and potentially lowering electricity bills.
Businesses and facilities that capture waste heat/pressure can have those systems qualify as renewable energy, making them eligible for USDA renewable programs or other incentives.
Expanding eligible renewable types may spur private investment and create jobs in waste-to-power technologies as well as installation and maintenance services, benefiting local and rural economies.
Project owners and taxpayers may face substantial upfront capital costs to install heat/pressure recovery systems, and federal recognition alone does not guarantee grants or loans to cover those expenses.
The bill's narrow definition requiring recovered heat/pressure to be the sole input could exclude hybrid or combined systems, preventing many otherwise viable projects from qualifying for benefits.
Recognizing additional technologies as 'renewable' may increase competition for limited USDA program funds, reducing available support per project or delaying assistance for some applicants.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Adds a statutory definition of "waste energy recovery" and includes it as a covered renewable energy type in 7 U.S.C. § 8101.
Official title: To amend the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 to include waste energy recovery as a source of renewable energy, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 14, 2026 by Gabriel Vasquez · Last progress January 14, 2026
Amends the federal definition of covered renewable energy under 7 U.S.C. § 8101 to add “waste energy recovery” as an enumerated renewable energy type and creates a specific statutory definition for it. The new definition covers heat or pressure that would otherwise be vented, throttled, or discharged from commercial, residential, or industrial processes when that recovered heat or pressure is used as the sole input to generate electricity (for example, waste heat‑to‑power or waste pressure‑to‑power systems).