Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy spoke to the North American Agricultural Journalists meeting in Washington DC on Monday and expressed confidence that the final rule for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) will be different than the proposed rule that reduces volume requirements for biofuels in 2014.
According to Agri-Pulse McCarthy said EPA is in the process of reviewing more than 200,000 comments on the RFS proposal and plans to issue a final rule in late spring or early summer.
She stressed that EPA has to make sure the final rule is implementable. “And that means taking into realities of the fuel market. One of those realities is the fuel blend wall.”
Agri-Pulse reports that McCarthy expects the final rule will “almost certainly” be different than the one that was proposed. “Gasoline demand had an impact in the proposal and it will also be reflected in the final rule,” she said.
She also said that EPA expects legal challenges to any RFS standards. “We need to be able to justify it in court,” McCarthy said. With current the current infrastructure, the industry this year would not be able to “get anywhere near” the levels required in the original RFS. “But we think that the industry is stepping up to that challenge,” she said. “We’re going to try to work toward these goals the best we can, but we need to be realistic.”