The Chair of the Governors’ Biofuels Coalition, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz sent a letter to President Joe Biden this week urging him to take two administrative steps to ensure the future of the states’ biofuels community.

One would be to issue an Executive Order banning the use of aromatics in gasoline.

Such an order, enforcing a largely ignored provision in the Clean Air Act, would “benefit public health, the environment, and the biofuels industry,” he stated. The governor pointed out that “reducing aromatics would lessen the fine particulate emissions associated with respiratory diseases.” The substitution of cleaner octane additives for aromatics would “expand the market for ethanol by a projected twofold increase,” according to the governor, boosting jobs and the economy in rural America.

The second would be to adopt new Renewable Fuel Standard regulations such as the Small Refinery Exemption provision, which
have been manipulated and distorted “to keep the RFS from meeting its full potential,” and abuses by billion-dollar companies have instead “severely damaged the nation’s biofuels industry.”

Governor Walz also encouraged President Biden to support efforts in Congress to create a renewable fuel infrastructure grant program and to streamline underground storage tank regulations.