In an op-ed for The Hill today, Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) president and CEO Bob Dinneen questions why EPA’s 2018 renewable fuel standard (RFS) blending requirements proposal includes a request for public comments on “whether the proposed biofuel volumes would somehow cause “severe harm” to the economy.”
“Of course, suggesting that ethanol and the RFS pose any “harm” at all—“severe” or otherwise—to the economy is completely preposterous,” Dinneen says, noting that an independent economic study will soon be published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics that shows the benefits the RFS is contributing to the U.S. economy.
The analysis found the RFS in 2015 saved the U.S. economy $17.8 billion in gasoline expenses, compared to a case where no RFS existed. That’s equivalent to savings of $142 per American household, or $82 per licensed driver. Gasoline prices were $0.18 per gallon, or nearly 10 percent, lower because of the RFS.