Growth Energy Battles in Court to Reverse Demand Destruction

Biofuel groups last week filed a court brief challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to properly establish 2020 biofuel blending targets under the Renewable Fuel Standard. In their brief, the parties seek to ensure that the annual biofuel targets, or Renewable Volume Obligations, account for small refinery exemptions the agency issued for past years. EPA’s current regulations factor in only future SREs, while ignoring biofuel demand destroyed by past SREs granted retroactively, totaling more than four billion gallons in recent years. Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor stated, “The Trump EPA’s 2020 biofuel targets failed to account for the billions of gallons of demand lost to the agency’s mismanagement of the Renewable Fuel Standard.” Growth Energy and others also challenge EPA’s abuse of its waiver authority for cellulosic biofuel targets. Under the 2020 RVOs, the agency set cellulosic targets that did not account for 50 million credits carried over from past years. As a result, cellulosic targets were set at 590 million gallons.