Biofuels coalition files brief challenging EPA’s failure to establish 2020 blending targets

In Washington, on Friday, January 29, Growth Energy, along with others in the biofuels industry, filed an opening brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (Case No. 20-1046) challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 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 (RVOs), account for small refinery exemptions (SREs) 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 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 a mere 590 million gallons.