Biofuels groups filed their formal comments to the Environmental Protection Agency on the mandated volumes under the Renewable Fuels Standard for 2023 through 2025.
Clean Fuels Alliance America is asking EPA to significantly increased the mandated amount of biomass-based diesel and biofuels over the next three years. If EPA is unable to significantly raise the volumes across the three years, they are requesting they only finalize 2023 requirements as directed by the Consent Decree.
The agency’s initial Renewable Volume Obligations or blending mandates flatlined volumes keeping requirements below 3 billion gallons through 2025. However, the group asked EPA to increase the biomass-based diesel by 500 million gallons year over year and increase the advanced biofuels volumes by 1 billion RINs year over year as supported through the data.
They say EPA is required to consider factors such as commercial development of these fuels, the positive impact on the economy, benefits for consumers and the environmental benefits. They add that the industry is already producing above the levels outlined in EPA’s proposal and has made investments to double production based on signals from the administration, including $5 billion in soy processing capacity.
Paul Winters with Clean Fuels Alliance America says, “The Department of Energy in particular is projecting billions of gallons of renewable diesel to come online in the next three years and if EPA is unwilling to provide space in the market under the RFS then a lot of those investments may be rethought pulled back and or the fuels will have to find other markets to go into.”
He says even though the industry is getting market-based signals for growth, including state low carbon fuels standards like in California, without the RFS mandate they could get undercut by the competition. Winters says, “Plenty of other markets are looking for biodiesel and renewable diesel if EPA is not going to accommodate that demand with higher volumes of RVOs than its possible that other countries will be recipients of the clean fuels that the U.S. producers are generating.”
EPA’s own data shows that more than 3.6 billion gallons of advanced biomass-based diesel was generated for the RFS program in 2022, an increase of more than 500 million gallons over 2021. The Energy Information Administration recently projected that domestic renewable diesel capacity could more than double through 2025 to 5.9 billion gallons.
