Governor Walz Sends Biofuels Letter to President Biden

(Red River Farm Network) Minnesota Governor Tim Walz sent a letter to President Biden on Wednesday asking him to support the biofuels industry and reverse the Trump administrations actions in supporting small refinery exemptions. Walz wants the Biden administration to issue an executive order to ban the use of aromatics in gasoline and adopt new Renewable Fuel Standard regulations. Read the letter. READ MORE

Excerpts fro letter to President Biden: Issue an Executive Order Banning the Use of Aromatics in Gasoline

To benefit public health, the environment, and the biofuels industry, I urge you to consider
executive action directing the enforcement of the Clean Air Act’s aromatics provision. That provision,
which has been largely unenforced for decades, requires the reduction of toxic gasoline aromatics,
replaced with cleaner octane additives.

Reducing aromatics would lessen the fine particulate emissions associated with respiratory
diseases. Enforcement of the aromatics provision would also create well-paying jobs and eliminate
gasoline’s most carbon intensive component. This order would expand the market for ethanol by a
projected twofold increase, a key to our collective efforts to revitalize jobs and encourage economic
growth in rural America.

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is one of Congress’s most significant energy policy
accomplishments. However, the RFS’s waiver provision has been used by billion-dollar companies to
obtain inappropriate blending waivers that have severely damaged the nation’s biofuels industry. The
most harmful abuse—the manipulation of the RFS’s small refinery exemption—is but one of several ways
the regulations have been distorted to keep the RFS from meeting its full potential. I would welcome an
opportunity to work with you and your Administration on RFS regulations to ensure that they create the
positive impact that was intended.

Over the years, I have seen firsthand how the ethanol industry has transformed and revived rural
communities and contributed to the fight against climate change. Today, those communities, along with
the ethanol industry, are endangered. These proposed executive actions would provide much needed
stability in rural America and provide countless benefits to all Americans.

As you consider these actions, I also encourage you to support the effort led by Senator Klobuchar
and Senator Ernst to create a renewable fuel infrastructure grant program and to streamline underground
storage tank regulations. Their plan would smooth the path to higher biofuel blends and amplify the
impact of the executive actions outlined in this letter. READ MORE