Welcome hearing on RFS

On 11^th December BIO thanked members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for holding a hearing on the RFS and the EPA’s 2014 proposals. The EPA is proposing to decrease the use of advanced biofuels in transportation for next year, reversing, what many believe, to be the growth path of the RFS. It is also thought that this decrease will slow commercial development of advanced and cellulosic biofuels, as well as other biotechnology applications.

Comments

Brent Erickson, executive vice president of BIO’s Industrial and Environmental section said, ‘advanced biofuel companies have invested billions of dollars in private capital to build a new industry from the ground up. EPA’s proposed rule will strand existing investments in advanced biofuels, severely curtail any further investment and development of future facilities, and put hundreds of thousands of existing and future jobs at risk. It could also harm efforts to commercialise other biotechnology research and development, such as renewable chemicals, that are growing out of the biorefinery platforms encouraged by the RFS.

‘Setting the 2014 RFS obligations lower than the 2013 levels would mean that America will use millions more barrels of oil each year and add millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Maintaining the RFS would result in a decrease in both.’

Adapted from a press release by Claira Lloyd.

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/12122013/rfs_hearing_welcomed910/