Advanced BioFuels USA

by Tiffany Stecker (E&E/Governors’ Biofuels Coalition)  The ink on U.S. EPA’s final rule for the renewable fuel standard is barely dry, but long-standing foes in Congress are already aiming to block the biofuels program.

Yesterday, Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), who spearheaded a letter with Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) last month to stop the annual increase of biofuels in the U.S. gasoline supply, offered an amendment to the House’s comprehensive energy bill (see related story). The language would prevent implementation of the program if the RFS calls for biofuel blending to exceed 10 percent — a “blend wall” that limits overall ethanol concentration to a level that minimizes potential risks of the biofuel corroding the inside of older vehicles and small engines.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) also introduced an amendment last week to repeal the RFS, as well as one to require a Government Accountability Office report on the program. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), another long-standing foe, used the rule’s announcement to tout his own “RFS Reform Act” (H.R. 704), which would strike corn ethanol from the program and reduce the levels to be blended in the fuel supply.

“Since the EPA refuses to keep RFS volumes below the blendwall, Congress must act to fix this broken ethanol mandate,” Goodlatte said in a press release. “The RFS Reform Act is a solution to the problems created by the ethanol mandate, and our bill would finally provide much-needed, long-term relief for those impacted by the failures of this policy.”

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Of that, conventional corn ethanol will make up 14.05 billion gallons in 2015 and 14.5 billion gallons in 2016, making up the bulk of the biofuel blended into the U.S. gasoline supply. This requirement breaks through the 10 percent blend wall in 2016, when the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects the overall fuel demand to be at least 140 billion gallons of gasoline (E&ENews PM, Nov. 30).

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On the Senate side, Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is a long-standing opponent of the RFS. But even he is unsure if the issue will gain much traction in Congress.

“This is one of the few issues where there’s nothing partisan about it; it’s all geography,” Inhofe told E&E Daily.

When asked how RFS reform compares to other hot-button environmental issues like EPA’s Waters of the U.S. rule or the Clean Power Plan, Inhofe said “it ranks a poor third, because people are just not emotionally involved in it.”

Regardless of what happens on Capitol Hill, the final rule is likely to be challenged on both sides in the courts.    READ MORE  and MORE (Washington Examiner)