(1) Subject to the availability of amounts appropriated for this specific purpose, a competitive industrial symbiosis grant program is established in order to provide grants for the research, development, and deployment of local waste coordination projects.

(2) Grants may go towards:

(a) Existing industrial symbiosis efforts by public or private sector organizations;

(b) Emerging industrial symbiosis opportunities involving public or private sector organizations, including projects arising from:

(i) The industrial waste coordination program established in RCW 43.31.625;

(ii) Conceptual work completed by public utilities to redirect their wastes to productive use; or

(iii) Existing inventories or project concepts involving specific biobased wastes converted to renewable natural gas;

(c) Research on product development using a specific waste flow;

(d) Feasibility studies to evaluate potential biobased resources;

(e) Feasibility studies for publicly owned utilities to evaluate business models to transform to multiutility operations or for the evaluation of potential symbiosis connections with other regional businesses; or

(f) Other local waste coordination projects as determined by the department of commerce.

(3) The department of commerce must develop a method and criteria for the allocation of grants, subject to the following:

(a) Project allocation should reflect geographic diversity, with grants being distributed equally in western and eastern parts of the state, urban and rural areas, and small towns and large cities;

(b) Project allocation should consider factors such as time to implementation and scale of economic or environmental benefits;

(c) Grants must require a one-to-one nonstate to state match;

(d) Individual grant awards may not exceed $500,000; and

(e) Project allocation should avoid creating or worsening environmental health disparities and should make use of tools such as the department of health’s environmental health disparities map.

Findings—Intent—2021 c 308: See note following RCW 43.31.625.