The US Environmental Protection Agency sought additional comments to establish cellulosic biofuel, advanced biofuel, and total renewable fuel volumes for 2020 and the biomass-based diesel volume for 2021 under the federal renewable fuel standard (RFS). The Oct. 15 notice does not change the proposed volumes but seeks comments on the way annual renewable fuel percentages are calculated, it said.
“Instead, it proposes and seeks comment on adjustments to the way that annual renewable fuel percentages are calculated. Annual renewable fuel percentage standards are used to calculate the number of gallons each obligated party is required to blend into their fuel or to otherwise obtain renewable identification numbers (RIN) to demonstrate compliance,” EPA explained.
It said that it specifically is seeking comment on projecting the volume of gasoline and diesel fuel that will be exempt in 2020 due to small refinery exemptions based on a 3-year average of the relief recommended by the US Department of Energy, including where DOE had recommended partial exemptions. EPA said that it intends to grant partial exemptions in appropriate circumstances when adjudicating 2020 exemption petitions.
“The agency proposes to use this value to adjust the way we calculate renewable fuel percentages,” it said. “The proposed adjustments would help ensure that the industry blends the final volumes of renewable fuel into the nation’s fuel supply and that, in practice, the required volumes are not effectively reduced by future hardship exemptions for small refineries.
“Consistent with the statute, the supplemental notice seeks to balance the goal of the RFS of maximizing the use of renewables while following the law and sound process to provide relief to small refineries that demonstrate the need,” EPA said.
EPA said it will hold a public hearing on Oct. 30, followed by a 30-day comment period to receive public input on these issues. The agency said it plans to finalize the rulemaking later this year.
Officials from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and Renewable Fuels Association quickly criticized the proposal in separate responses.
“EPA’s proposed RFS adjustments would be a painful affront to US refiners and the manufacturing workers the president promised to support, and do nothing to address the real source of what currently ails the biofuel and agriculture industries: the trade war with China,” AFPM Pres. Chet Thompson said. “These adjustments would be bad for US manufacturing and bad for consumers, and certainly not a ‘win-win’ solution.”
“It is baffling to us that the proposal sets the three-year average of exempted volume using the very same DOE recommendations that EPA blatantly ignored over and over,” RFA Pres. Geoff Cooper said. “We are concerned that the volume of actual exemptions granted in 2020 could very well exceed the amount of projected exemptions from DOE, putting us right back into the quagmire where the 15 billion-gallon requirement is eroded and undermined.
“Simply put, this proposal is not what was promised by the administration just over a week ago and fails to answer President [Donald} Trump’s personal call for a stronger conventional biofuel requirement of more than 15 billion gallons,” he declared. “It is our hope that President Trump will personally intervene again to get the RFS back on track and ensure his EPA honors the commitments that were made.”
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].
