The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday fully approved two of 16 exemptions sought from national biofuel-blending requirements, and partially approved 12 more, prompting criticism from ethanol producers.
The requests came from eight refineries for compliance years 2021-24, EPA said.
The EPA is winding down an overhang in the biofuels industry from the prior Biden administration. The small refinery exemptions have been a major source of contention between fuel refiners, who argue that a government mandate to mix renewable fuel into the U.S. petroleum-based supply each year is an unmanageable economic burden, and biofuel advocates, who question the legitimacy of some of the petitions.
"EPA created even more uncertainty and confusion in the renewable fuel and agriculture markets, which are already under immense pressure from record corn and soybean harvests this fall," Renewable Fuels Association CEO Geoff Cooper said. "We continue to dispute the notion that SREs are warranted at all."
The Trump administration also said it has corrected an error in one SRE decision issued in August that mistakenly provided a partial exemption for 2020 to a refinery that should have been given a full waiver. The error was the result of a clerical error made by the Department of Energy, according to EPA.
The EPA had approved 140 petitions in part or in full earlier this year, and denied just 28, leaving just a handful remaining under review. The agency didn't disclose the individual refineries.
The SRE issue is complicating the outlook for 2026-27 biofuel-blending mandates, known as renewable volume obligations, or RVOs. EPA is expected to release finalized rules in coming weeks.
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RFA’s Cooper said EPA’s actions mean more than 500 million valid biofuel credits, known as RINs, will be issued to eight refineries who were “gifted” exemptions from 2023-24 obligations. In turn, more than 2.5 billion RINs are likely to be put back onto the market in coming months, according to the ethanol lobby’s chief.
“Another 500+ million RINs of lost demand is the last thing our soybean farmers and processors need right now,” National Oilseed Processors Association CEO Devin Mogler and American Soybean Association CEO Stephen Censky said in a joint statement. “The time has come to finalize the RVOs with full reallocation of these eroded gallons, before the end of the calendar year to provide market certainty."
Clean Fuels Alliance America also called for the Trump administration to fully reallocate all exempted volumes from small refineries and finalize RVOs as soon as possible.
“We recently provided EPA a study showing that farmers risk losing as much as 40 cents per bushel on soybeans this year, potentially billions of dollars, if small refinery exemptions are not reallocated,” said Paul Winters, CFAA’s head of public affairs and federal communications. “U.S. biodiesel and renewable diesel producers need certainty to get back on track with production and growth.”
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