Clean Fuels urges EPA to fully reallocate exempted RFS volumes

Clean Fuels Alliance America commended U.S. EPA Oct. 31 for taking action to ensure that robust 2026 and 2027 Renewable Fuel Standard volumes are not eroded by small-refinery exemptions (SREs).

Clean Fuels urged the agency to adopt supplemental “SRE reallocation volumes” and updated estimates of exempted volumes for 2026-’27 representing 100 percent of all granted, pending and expected exemptions for the 2023-’25 compliance years.

Clean Fuels also asked the agency to be judicious in granting exemptions.

“Clean Fuels urges EPA to adopt the complete reallocation for SREs granted for 2023 through 2025—including any petitions received before the rule is final—and project SREs going forward using an up-to-date average,” Clean Fuels stated in comments on the supplemental rule proposed in September.

Clean Fuels provided the agency a full analysis from World Agricultural Economic and Environmental Services of the economic consequences of small-refinery exemptions for farmers and the agricultural economy.

The study shows that if the agency fails to fully account for small-refinery exemptions, biobased diesel production will fall by nearly a billion gallons and soybean farmers and processors could lose as much as $7.5 billion in crop value.

“Clean Fuels appreciates EPA’s acknowledgement that small-refinery exemptions will destroy demand for biomass-based diesel over the next several years by enabling refiners to avoid RFS obligations,” added Kurt Kovarik, Clean Fuels’ vice president of federal affairs.

“Small-refinery exemptions should not come at the expense of clean-fuel producers and farmers,” Kovarik added.

“Accounting for 100 percent of the exemptions granted and expected is the only way to ensure that robust 2026 and 2027 RFS volumes will be met,” he said.

Clean Fuels’ comments are available here.