Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has vetoed legislation that would have blocked economic development incentives for chemical recycling, stopping a bill supported by his fellow Democrats because he said the recycling technology is needed to help meet climate goals.
The bill, which passed the state Legislature May 16, would have prevented state economic development funds and other tax incentives from going to pyrolysis or gasification projects for reprocessing plastic waste, tires or other discarded materials.
Supporters of the legislation argued it would cut pollution from plastics-to-fuel processing plants and said they wanted the state to back other technologies such as mechanical recycling to help green the state's economy.
But Polis, in his May 17 veto message, said the plan would have hamstrung state economic development and limited development of aviation fuel from waste materials.
A supporter of the bill, state Sen. Lisa Cutter, D-Lakewood, reacted to Polis's veto by writing on social media that she was "disappointed that taxpayer $$ could potentially fund this dirty process in Colorado and perpetuate the use of plastic."
As well, another sponsor, state Rep. Meg Froelich, D-Greenwood Village, suggested the state should instead support mechanical recycling and rely on extended producer responsibility legislation it passed in 2022 to make Colorado's economy more sustainable, rather than pyrolysis.
"We tried to make sure no state $$ [would] go to dirty plastics to fuel facilities," Froelich wrote on the platform X. "Mechanical recycling of plastics does work, we can create a circular economy."
But in his lengthy veto statement, Polis said the bill was "unworkable."
He said he appreciated that its backers had narrowed their original proposal, which called for a blanket ban on chemical recycling technologies, but that it was still too broad.
"This is primarily because it is inappropriate to prohibit a specific technology in statute across all state incentive programs," Polis wrote, adding that it is the executive branch's role to apply both economic development incentives and environmental laws, rather than use legislation to target specific technology.
"Restricting the ability of the state to incentivize potential projects as a backdoor way to regulate potential polluters is not a good precedent," Polis wrote.
He said pyrolysis and gasification technologies could be "critical" to helping the aviation industry make fuels to reduce its emissions, and he said the bill's language of covered materials and sectors was too broad.