The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today took action on the backlog of 175 Small Refinery Exemption (SRE) petitions from 38 small refineries for 2016 – 2024 compliance years.

After carefully reviewing all information, EPA is granting full exemptions to 63 petitions, granting partial exemptions to 77 petitions, denying 28 petitions, and determining 7 petitions to be ineligible.

EPA is reaffirming the policy it set in the first Trump Administration through the 2020 Renewable Volume Obligation Rulemaking, granting partial relief (a 50 percent exemption) where a small refinery has demonstrated that it faces partial hardship. Under DOE’s 2011 Small Refinery Study, small refineries would have been denied any relief despite demonstrating partial hardship. With today’s action, EPA is getting the SRE program back on track with an approach that recognizes some small refineries are impacted more significantly than others and that EPA’s relief should reflect those differences.

The announcement was similar to what American Coalition for Ethanol CEO Brian Jennings was expecting. “We know that they’re likely to approve some, they’re likely to deny some. The refiners are gonna complain, and we might too,” said Jennings during an interview this week at the ACE Annual Conference in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “The good news is that the second Trump administration is taking the approach we were hoping for all along for the future…For 2026 and 2027 when, and there will be some, when the Trump EPA allows refinery exemptions, the gallons of renewable fuel those small refineries were supposed to blend will be reallocated to other refiners. In other words, the RVOs remain whole. And that’s exactly the way we wanted it done.”