The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is one of America’s great success stories, and the bedrock policy that forged our nation’s biofuels industry. It provides consumers with real choice and savings at the pump, while strengthening our rural economy, lowering our carbon footprint, and delivering greater energy independence by requiring a modest but growing amount of biofuels be blended into our nation’s transportation fuel mix.  Today, 98 percent of gasoline in the U.S. contains about 10 percent ethanol.

At Growth Energy, we believe the RFS should be faithfully executed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as Congress intended, and that EPA should not undermine the policy and increase consumer fuel costs, hurt our economy, and hinder progress toward our environmental goals.

Growth Energy will continue to support:

• Finalizing strong Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs) for 2021 and 2022
• Rejecting improper and illegal retroactive cuts to the already finalized 2020 RVOs
• Rejecting all pending and improperly granted small refinery exemptions (SREs)
• Restoring the 500 million gallons remanded by the courts in 2017
• Setting forward-leaning biofuel targets for 2023 and beyond that recognize the contributions of low-carbon ethanol in achieving climate goals
• Updating EPA’s outdated lifecycle carbon assessment model
• Approving pending registrations for cellulosic biofuel from kernel fiber

Small Refinery Exemptions (SREs)

The 2005 RFS allowed small refineries with a production capacity less than 75,000 barrels per day to be temporarily exempted from the law’s blending requirements. When the RFS was expanded in 2007, EPA extended these exemptions until 2011 and required small refineries to demonstrate “disproportionate economic hardship” to qualify for future waivers. Starting with the 2016 compliance period, EPA rapidly increased the number of SREs, granting 85 over three years and removing over 4 billion gallons of biofuels from the marketplace.