WASHINGTON, May 4, 2016 - Depending on the timeline the
administration chooses to follow, the 2017 Renewable Fuel
Standard proposal could be published at any point between Saturday and the
middle of July.
Last year, under a court order, the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) proposed
2014-2016 RFS Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs) on May 29, just 22 days after
the agency submitted the rule to the White House Office of Management and
Budget for review. EPA submitted the 2017 RVOs – or the amounts of renewables
that must be blended with gasoline – on April 15, and in the unlikely event
that the administration follows last year’s timeline, the 22-day window would
close on Saturday.
However, the likeliness of that happening is slim to none.
Last year, EPA agreed to a consent decree with set release deadlines, something
that is not the case this year. Now, OMB has up to 90 days to review EPA’s
proposal, putting the potential release date at any point between now and July
14. Extensions are also possible, meaning the announcement could be delayed
even longer.
EPA officials have publicly declared a desire to get the RFS
“back on track” when it comes to scheduled release dates, but Renewable Fuels
Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen tells Agri-Pulse that he wants
to see a little more than that out of the agency.
“We hear ‘back on track’ and we hope that it means more than
just meeting the gosh darn deadlines,” Dinneen said. “We hope that it
means putting the statute back on track, making sure that they are setting the
volumes where Congress intended them to be.”
Renewable fuel advocates are still upset with last year’s
announcement, when EPA finalized
RVOs below levels set in the Energy
Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) and cited infrastructure
concerns as its reason for doing so. The National Corn Growers Association,
Growth Energy, RFA, and other groups are currently involved in litigation
against the EPA for the use of an infrastructure waiver that the groups say is
not in the EISA. A decision on that lawsuit is expected in early 2017, much too
late to have an impact on the 2017 RVOs.
While there are some limitations to discussions the groups
can have with EPA because of that lawsuit, Jon Doggett, NCGA’s executive vice
president for public policy, said in an interview with Agri-Pulse that
the groups are concerned the infrastructure concerns may make another
appearance in the 2017 RVOs.
“They’ve tried it once, we’re concerned that they would try
it again,” Doggett said. “Even though there’s been a lot of investment in
infrastructure in the last year, they still may use it. We don’t know why they
used it before. Who knows what they’re going to do.”
Both Doggett and Dinneen said their groups would be pushing
for a statutory RVO – 24 billion gallons of renewable fuels with the potential
for 15 billion gallons of that coming from corn ethanol. Chandler Goule with
the National Farmers Union told Agri-Pulse that he thinks the numbers
will increase from the 2016 RVO (18.11 billion total gallons, potential for
14.5 billion gallons of corn ethanol), but will still come up short of the
statutory figures.
The American Petroleum Institute also has a request for the
RFS that unsurprisingly runs contrary to what the renewable fuels groups want.
An API spokesman said in an email to Agri-Pulse that the group wants “EPA
to limit ethanol mandates to 9.7 percent of total gasoline demand.” The U.S.
Energy Information Administration is projecting 2017 motor gasoline consumption
at just over 141 billion gallons, meaning API is hoping for a level of about
13.68 billion gallons.
No one who talked with Agri-Pulse for this story had
any guess as to when the RVO proposal might be released, but Ron Carleton,
EPA’s agricultural liaison, told members of the National Association of Farm
Broadcasting last week that a proposal could be expected “later this spring.”
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