The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) remains one of America’s most successful clean energy policies.
For almost 20 years, the RFS has grown a new American industry that supports hundreds of thousands of American jobs, improves the rural economy, and increases the demand for farm commodities, helps reduce carbon emissions, and provides more affordable options at the pump, and delivers greater energy and national security.
In 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set renewable volume obligations (RVOs) for the first time without relying on statutory volumes set by Congress. Instead, EPA was required to set the standards by considering six statutory factors that include costs, climate change, air quality, energy security, and infrastructure, among others. The “Set” rule that EPA finalized for the 2023-2025 RVOs maintained the 15 billion gallon implied conventional RVO that EPA had long established in previous years, provided a modest increase in non-cellulosic advanced and biomass-based diesel (BBD) RVOs, and did not project any SREs for the period.