Updated Chart of the Week: The Renewable Fuel Standard’s Cost to Consumers

(Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRINC)) ... Under EPA’s final renewable volume obligations for compliance years 2026 and 2027, the agency elected to reallocate 70% of previously exempt volumes—above the range advocated by petroleum interests and below the level sought by biofuel interests. Following the late March 2026 announcement, RIN prices, already elevated, rose between 6% and 9%.

Using a mathematical model adapted from S&P Platts, the adjacent figure reflects EPRINC’s ongoing estimates of the RFS’s additional cost per gallon of fuel, rising from 15 cents per gallon in January 2024 to 45 cents in May 2026. At a current estimate of 45 cents per gallon and 140 billion gallons of annual U.S. gasoline consumption, annual total economic cost is projected to be over $66 billion to U.S. consumers.

Under U.S. law, refiners and importers must meet blending mandates to include specific volumes of biofuels in the marketing of transportation fuels. The law is known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and is administered by EPA.

The RFS, enacted in 2005, and then strengthened in 2007, is complicated. Following a period ending in 2022 of statutory requirements determining blending percentages, its administrative authority has become discretionary. Currently, provisional blending percentages for 2026 and 2027 are under debate and review along with provisions of reallocating previously made exemptions as further blending requisites.

Compliance is managed using RINs (Renewable fuel Identification Numbers), a costly credit system that ascertains blending requirements. RIN prices reflect whether blending mandates are aggressive or lax. These costs are then passed on to consumers of gasoline and diesel.

Trump continues to tease the suspension of the federal gas tax as a way for Americans to also save money.

But experts say there’s another easier move the administration could take right now, that would not entail Members of Congress pulling themselves off the campaign trail to cast a vote: Using power that sits with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suspend or lessen ethanol blending requirements the agency sets under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

For months, opponents of high blending requirements in the nation’s capital have been highlighting research by the Energy Policy Research Foundation that estimates the RFS raises fuel prices by 45 cents per gallon.

Now, also circulating among energy policy honchos and campaign operatives alike is an April 2026 paper by agricultural economists from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Oklahoma State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Harvard, which shows that Ethanol RINs (Renewable Identification Numbers)— digital compliance credits created by EPA to track and manage the use of renewable fuels under the RFS—are contributing to high diesel prices.

The study found that RIN pricing follows basic economic fundamentals. “RIN price volatility is related to the structure of the RFS, political uncertainty about the implementation of the mandates, and supply and demand uncertainty in U.S. biofuel and petroleum markets,” wrote the authors. READ MORE