from National Farmers Union
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced final 2018 renewable volume obligations (RVOs) for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The agency will maintain the corn ethanol requirement at its current levels, and increase cellulosic and advanced biofuel requirements slightly from their July 2017 proposal. It will also stagnate biodiesel requirements at 2.1 billion gallons, well short of the industry’s capacity.
The final RVOs are an improvement over proposed RVOs issued earlier this year, yet they fall short of maintaining Congress’ intent to drive growth in the American biofuels industry, according to National Farmers Union (NFU) President Roger Johnson.
He released the following statement in response to the announcement:
“While it’s clear EPA made an attempt to reverse some of their flawed proposals from earlier this year, the improvements to the finalized volume obligations are meager and deeply disappointing. The agency missed a significant opportunity to follow through on the administration’s promises to advance the interests of American family farmers, their communities, and the biofuel industry.
“The RFS was written to promote expanded use of homegrown, renewable biofuels. So long as EPA continues to fail to meet that congressional intent, they’ll continue to shortchange our nation’s family farmers, rural communities, consumers and the environment.
“We have the capacity to increase these requirements. We certainly have a need to increase them, as family farmers battle a steep and prolonged decline in the farm economy. And we have a law on the books that was written to incentivize increased American biofuel production. NFU will continue to pursue avenues to ensure the success of the American biofuel industry for our family farmer members.”
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