WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied one of the 30 pending small refinery exemptions (SRE) pending for the 2019 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) Compliance year and of 65 total pending. Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor released the following statement in response:
“As our industry awaits three years’ of Renewable Volume Obligations from EPA, we hope today’s SRE denial is an indication that they are working toward getting the RFS back on track,” said Skor. “For too long, refiners have misused SREs as a way avoid their statutory requirements to blend more clean, renewable fuels, and we’re encouraged that today’s SRE denial means that this SRE abuse will be a practice of the past. If our country wants to achieve the climate goals being discussed this week at COP26, we need to blend more cleaner-burning biofuels, not less, and EPA should take this into consideration when issuing the upcoming RVOs.”