Senate Ag Committee Restores 2018 Farm Bill Energy Title Funding

by Erin Voegele (Biomass Magazine) On June 13, the Senate ag committee approved the its version of the 2018 Farm Bill with bipartisan support. The legislation includes an amendment offered by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., that restores mandatory funding to Farm Bill Energy Title programs. The legislation, officially titled the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, will now be considered by the full Senate.

Klobuchar offered the amendment during a June 13 committee meeting held on Farm Bill legislation. The amendment aims to restore mandatory funding for Energy Title programs to 2014 levels.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., noted that some of the Energy Title programs impacted by Klobuchar’s amendment include the Biomass Research and Development Initiative; the Biobased Markets Program; the Biorefinery, Renewable Chemical and Product Manufacturing Assistance Program; the Bioenergy Program for Advanced Biofuels; and the Biomass Crop Assistance Program.

Also during the Farm Bill meeting, committee members discussed the Renewable Fuel Standard and the U.S. EPA’s misuse of small refinery hardship waivers.

Klobuchar stressed the RFS is critically important to Minnesota, and cited recent reports that indicate the EPA has granted dozens of small refinery waivers to large refining companies. “These actions hurt not only biofuel producers, but farmers across the U.S. at a time when farm income is at its lowest since 2006,” she said. “The secretary of agriculture has deemed these waivers as demand destruction for biofuels.”

According to Klobuchar, the EPA has historically granted between six and eight waivers per year for extraordinary reasons. “But, recent reports have noted that the EPA has already issued 25 disproportionate hardship waivers this year.”

Grassley cited news reports that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in Kansas yesterday that he has the authority to reallocate gallons offset by the waivers. He stressed that President Trump has repeatedly promised to meet the 15 billion gallon statutory renewable volume obligation (RVO) for conventional biofuels. However, the EPA’s misuse of waivers has effectively cut the RVO to 13.8 billion gallons. Grassley also spoke about the agency’s proposed 2019 RVOs, which are expected to be released soon. He said we don’t know what the EPA will propose for 2019, but stressed the EPA better keeps Trump’s promises with regard to the RFS. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: Rep. Mike Simpson and other appropriators will meet today with Speaker Paul Ryan about next steps in getting the first spending bill of the year to President Donald Trump's desk, but Simpson predicted it would take "a while" to resolve differences between the House and Senate energy and water titles. The Senate passed its first minibus spending package, H.R. 5895 (115) , on Monday evening and the House passed its own version earlier this month. Now it's time for the two chambers to reconcile their differences. Policy riders are among the biggest points of departure between the two bills. Where House Republicans' bill, which passed along party lines, would have blocked implementation of the Waters of the U.S. rule (saving the Trump administration a messy court fight), the Senate jettisoned that language in order to bring Democrats on board. The Senate also sought more funding for clean energy programs and the popular ARPA-E program, which the Trump administration has proposed to eliminate.

"We can conference 99 percent of it," Simpson told ME. "There's about 1 percent that we'll have some disagreement on." READ MORE