Clean Fuels Alliance America is criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Renewable Fuel Standard volumes for 2023 and beyond for “undercutting investments in biodiesel and renewable diesel capacity.”
The minor increases for biomass-based diesel volumes in 2023, 2024 and 2025 are below the industry’s existing production and ignore the clean fuels industry’s significant investments in new capacity. The volumes provide no additional space for sustainable aviation fuel and short-circuit the nation’s goals to cut carbon emissions.
“EPA’s overdue set proposal significantly undercounts existing biomass-based diesel production and fails to provide growth for investments the industry has already made in additional capacity, including for sustainable aviation fuel. The volumes EPA is proposing for 2023, 2024 and 2025 ignore the more than 3 billion gallons currently in the market and fail to take into account the planned growth of the clean fuels sector,” said Clean Fuels Vice President of Federal Affairs Kurt Kovarik.
EPA’s data from the RFS program show that the U.S. market reached 3.1 billion gallons of biomass-based diesel in 2021 and already 2.9 billion gallons through October 2022, with two months still to go. The Energy Information Administration’s Short Term Energy Outlook, which informs EPA’s decisions on annual RFS volumes, currently projects a 500-million-gallon increase in biodiesel and renewable diesel consumption for 2023. EIA has also projected 2.4. billion gallons of added renewable diesel capacity coming online by 2024 and calculated another 1.8 billion gallons in announced planned capacity.
“The biodiesel and renewable diesel industry has already made considerable investments in production capacity and distribution infrastructure that will come online by 2025. The soybean and canola industries have invested more than $4 billion to bring additional feedstock capacity online over the next several years,” Kovarik continued. “EPA’s proposed biomass-based diesel volumes undercut those investments.”