WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Wednesday, November twentieth, Progress Vitality, together with Clear Fuels Alliance America, filed a brand new opening temporary with the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (Case No. 20-1046) difficult the Environmental Safety Company’s (EPA) failure to totally account for small refinery exemptions (SREs) when issuing renewable quantity obligations (RVO) beneath the Renewable Gasoline Commonplace (RFS).
Of their temporary, the events search to make sure that RVOs account for SREs the company issued for previous years. Present rules require EPA solely to challenge future SREs when establishing future RVOs, whereas ignoring biofuel demand destroyed by previous SREs granted retroactively, totaling greater than 4 billion gallons lately.
“EPA’s RVO rules fail to account for the billions of gallons of demand misplaced to the company’s mismanagement of the Renewable Gasoline Commonplace,” stated Progress Vitality CEO Emily Skor. “Regulators took one step ahead in the course of the first Trump administration by recognizing the longer term impression of oil business handouts, however since then EPA has by no means tried to restore the harm from previous handouts that continues to overwhelm the biofuels business and our farm companions. That has to vary.”
Background
EPA printed the unique 2020 RVO on February 6, 2020. The RVO was challenged within the D.C. Circuit by a number of events quickly thereafter. Progress intervened in help of components of the rule on behalf of EPA and, individually, petitioned the court docket to problem EPA’s failure to account for previous SREs. After the instances have been consolidated (Case No. 20-1046), and after preliminary briefing in late 2020, the court docket granted motions to remain the consolidated instances pending the Supreme Court docket’s resolution on SRE eligibility in HollyFrontier v. EPA. The case proceeded till December 2021, when EPA issued a brand new proposed rule for the 2020 RVO in addition to 2021-2022 RVOs and sought remand with out vacatur of the unique 2020 RVO. The court docket deferred resolution on remand and continued to remain the case. EPA’s remaining 2020-2022 RVOs additionally didn’t account for previous SREs. The court docket continued to remain the unique 2020 RVO case till after the D.C. Circuit’s opinion on new instances difficult the brand new 2020-2022 RVOs. The D.C. Circuit upheld the brand new 2020-2022 RVOs on Might 14, 2024 (Case No. 22-1210), after which era the court docket lifted the keep on the unique 2020 RVO problem and set a briefing schedule.
