The Clean Fuels Alliance America, the trade association representing the biodiesel, renewable diesel, and aviation fuel industries, formally notified the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week of its intent to sue the federal agency over its failure to issue finalized 2026 Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS).
The EPA is required by statue to issue the latest RFS standards 14 months prior to the start of the compliance year. For 2026, that deadline comes at end of this October.
“EPA’s failure to timely issue the 2026 RFS volumes compounds another issue: EPA set the volumes for 2023 through 2025 too low,” Clean Fuels states in its intent letter." As explained in Clean Fuels' petition for reconsideration of the 2024 and 2025 volumes, EPA set biomass-based diesel and advanced volumes for those years significantly below what the industry can achieve. The result has been a crash in RIN prices, shuttered production facilities, and cancellations of planned facility expansion. While EPA can and should reconsider and revise its 2024 and 2025 volumes, it should at a minimum set a timely 2026 volume."
The full letter of intent to sue the EPA can be found here.
Clean Fuels' Vice President for Federal Affairs, Kurt Kovarik, adds that it provided the EPA with a significant amount of data on its "growth to support [its] petition to revise the 2024 and 2025 RFS volumes for biomass-based diesel and advanced biofuels. There isn't any practical reason that would prevent the agency from meeting the legal deadline for the 2026 RFS rule."
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Furthermore, Kovarik points out, "members of both the U.S. House and Senate have urged EPA to issue timely 2026 RFS volumes to mitigate the damage from the agency's miscalculation of volumes for 2023, 2024 and 2025. Stakeholder organizations earlier this year have asked EPA to ensure it met the deadline for the 2026 rule. The biodiesel, renewable diesel, and SAF industry needs EPA to get the program back on track to support our growth."
Examples of lawmakers' efforts urging the EPA to issue the 2026 RFS rule include:
- July 11 letter from 37 U.S. Representatives
- June 12 letter from 18 U.S. Senators
- April 29 letter from nine trade associations
“Clean Fuels provided EPA a great deal of data on our growth to support our petition to revise the 2024 and 2025 RFS volumes for biomass-based diesel and advanced biofuels. There isn’t any practical reason that would prevent the agency from meeting the legal deadline for the 2026 RFS rule.”
