NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA—Progress Power, the nation’s largest biofuels commerce affiliation, this week filed two petitions for rehearing with the Fifth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals relating to the Courtroom’s 2023 choice on small refinery exemptions (SREs) below the Renewable Gas Customary (RFS).
The RFS permits small refiners to request exemptions from this system’s gas mixing obligations if they’ll exhibit to the U.S. Environmental Safety Company (EPA) that compliance with the RFS would impose a “disproportionate financial hardship.” EPA has denied a number of of those requests over the previous few years, reflecting quite a few well-established analyses which have proven that refineries almost all the time recoup their RFS compliance prices. Nonetheless, in November, the Fifth Circuit sided with a bunch of six refineries, ruling that EPA improperly denied their SRE requests.
“As we famous in November, this lawsuit was by no means in regards to the purported financial hardship confronted by a small group of refineries—its final purpose was to permit these refineries to not adjust to the legislation, and to dam client entry to lower-cost, lower-carbon gas choices on the pump,” stated Progress Power CEO Emily Skor. “In its opinion, the Fifth Circuit made procedural and substantive errors and failed to contemplate the report, which demonstrates that EPA’s choice to disclaim the refinery exemptions was appropriate and properly inside its authority.”
“We hope that the rehearing petition will immediate the courtroom to revisit and revise its opinion to permit EPA to proceed to correctly implement the nationwide SRE program, and make sure the integrity of the Renewable Gas Customary, which spurs the manufacturing of American-made biofuels to bolster our rural economic system, guarantee nationwide and power safety, decrease carbon emissions, and save shoppers cash.”
Copies of the petitions can be found right here and right here.
