Concerns around the RFS program

The Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO) along with the Advanced Ethanol Council (AEC) and 37 of their member companies have written to the White House to express concerns over a draft proposal for the 2014 RFS rules that were recently leaked. The group noted that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must continue to follow the data driven approach it has used to date in order to open the market to competition and achieve the coals of the program.

Letter extracts

‘The RFS is engineered to address challenges like the oil industry’s historic and current refusal to blend more renewable fuels. Investors in next generation biofuels understand how the RFS and RIN values work to introduce market access for advanced biofuels. As such, any perceived unwillingness on the part of RFS administrators to allow the program to work would send a clear signal to the advanced biofuel marketplace that the RFS may not be allowed to change market behaviour as promised. This mere possibility increases investment risk, which in turn decreases the effective deployment of advanced biofuels.’

‘On the legal side, we believe that any reliance on the blend wall to provide effective waiver of the program presents the same problem. The legal standard for a waiver is now by design.’

‘The RFS is a landmark and innovative program that has been administered admirably by EPA/OMB to date and is changing US liquid fuel markets at the fundamental level. But the RFS is only recently pushing the oil industry out of its comfort zone with regard to the amount of renewable fuel utilised in the marketplace and the types of advanced fuels beginning to come online from new sectors. Depressurising the program too aggressively at this critical juncture will only make the deployment of advanced biofuels more challenging by embedding wilful non-compliance as a construct for discouraging innovation, blocking the availability of cheaper fuels and increasing pump prices, and undercutting billions of dollars of investment in advanced biofuels.’

Adapted from a press release by Claira Lloyd.

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/30102013/rfs_concerns_voiced797/