Advanced BioFuels USA

by Erin Voegele (Ethanol Producer Magazine) The U.S. EPA released a proposed rule on April 13 that aims to streamline and modernize the agency’s existing fuels regulations. In the rulemaking, the EPA said it is proposing “some slight modifications to the Renewable Fuel Standard,” but indicated it does not plan to make substantive changes to the RFS as part of this rulemaking.

A fact sheet published by the EPA explains the rulemaking proposes to “update the agency’s existing gasoline, diesel and other fuels programs in 40 CFR part 80 to improve overall compliance assurance and maintain environmental performance, while reducing compliance costs for industry and EPA.”

According to the EPA, the rulemaking would streamline existing fuel quality regulations by removing expired provisions, eliminating redundant compliance provisions, such as duplicative registration requirements that are required by every EPA fuels program, and remove unnecessary and out-of-date requirements. These regulations would be replaced with a single set of provisions and definitions in a new 40 CFR part 1090 that would apply across all gasoline, diesel and other fuel quality programs currently regulated under 40 CFR part 80, with the exception of the RFS. The EPA said the rulemaking does not propose to change the stringency of the existing fuel quality standards, nor does it propose any new standards on fuels or remove any statutory requirement for fuels specified in the Clean Air Act.

The fact sheet outlines three key elements that are to be included in part 1090. First, the updated regulations would simplify the reformulated gasoline (RFG) summer volatile organic compound (VOC) standards. Second, the regulations would consolidate the regulatory requirements across the part 80 fuel quality programs. Third, the regulations would improve oversight through the leveraging of third parties to ensure in-use fuel quality.

“The nature of this proposal is generally administrative or technical and includes amendments for parties that produce and distribute fuels, fuel additives, and regulated blendstocks,” said the EPA in the fact sheet. “These amendments include the elimination of hundreds of pages of obsolete or redundant regulations.”

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For existing approvals under part 80, the EPA said regulated parties would not need to update a previously approved submission under part 1090. “For example, we have approved alternative E15 labels under part 80,” the EPA said in the proposed rule. “Parties would not need to have those labels reapproved in order to use them under part 1090.” The EPA, however, said one notable exception is for in-line blending waivers. “We are proposing significant changes to the in-line blending waiver provisions for RFG (mostly to remove provisions related to parameters that would no longer need to be reported) and for [conventional gasoline (CG)], which are designed to make consistent with the proposed RFG in-line blender waiver provisions,” the agency said in the rule. “As such, we are proposing to require resubmission of all in-line blending waiver requests to ensure that they meet the new requirements.”

According to the EPA, the proposed rule also aims to make streamlined regulations more accessible by establishing subpart B, a roadmap for regulated parties that directs them to the subparts that are most likely to affect them and their businesses. 

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Gasoline standards would be consolidated into part 1090 subpart C. “We are not proposing to change the lead, phosphorous, sulfur, benzene standards or the RVP gasoline standards in the summer, nor are we proposing to change the standards for oxygenates (including denatured fuel ethanol), certified ethanol denaturant, gasoline additives, and standards for certified butane and pentane,” the EPA said in the rulemaking. “These standards are simply being moved and consolidated into subpart C. Any comments on these standards will be treated as beyond the scope of this rulemaking.”

The rulemaking does, however, proposed to make changes in the form of RFG VOC performance standards.

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Regarding the reformulated gasoline volatility standard, the EPA said it is proposing to replace the existing compliance mechanism used for RFG batch certification with a summer RVP maximum per-gallon standard and apply that same single RVP standard to all RFG gasoline nationwide and provide greater flexibility for blending of oxygenates (ethanol and biobutanol) in E0 in RFG areas.

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The proposed rule addresses downstream oxygenate accounting. 

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According to the agency, the utilization of the proposed hand blend approach would allow gasoline manufacturers to adjust hand blends to adopt to market changes almost immediately, for example to increased demands for E0 or E15.

The proposed rule also addresses proposed third-party survey provisions.

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The Renewable Fuels Association plans to submit comments to the EPA on the proposed rule. “RFA is carefully reviewing the proposal released today and we will submit detailed written comments to EPA once the comment period opens,” said an RFA spokesperson. “While this a highly complex and technical proposal, EPA has been discussing many of these proposed changes with stakeholders, including RFA, for the past few years. Many of these proposed changes will have little or no impact on ethanol producers, but we are evaluating several provisions of potential interest to the ethanol industry. For example, it appears EPA’s proposal to streamline fuel program compliance surveys—including the unnecessary E15 survey—could result in reduced cost and regulatory burden for ethanol producers.”

The proposed rule spans more than 500 pages and includes a wide variety of other provisions that impact the EPA’s fuels regulations. The agency will open a 60-day public comment period on proposed rule following its publication in the Federal Register. A pre-publication version of the rulemaking can be downloaded from the EPA website.   READ MORE