The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made long-anticipated updates to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program in June 2023. These regulatory moves acknowledged the progress the industry has made since the RFS was first established in 2005, but ultimately undervalued the industry’s potential, and left several key regulatory issues unresolved.
 
Specifically, the “set” Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO) rule finalized in 2023 disregarded numerous studies about the availability of feedstocks and our industry’s potential production capacity, especially for renewable diesel. As a result, it has undercut the advanced biofuels market by 500 million gallons per year. As the RFS is a crucial market driver for the industry, we must continue to educate regulators and our elected officials on the state of the advanced biofuels industry, including the key role they play in reducing emissions, to avoid the same mistake in the future.
 
Looking toward the future, the EPA has the power to make even more progress in reducing carbon emissions by updating the RFS to incentivize fuels that deliver emissions reductions greater than 50% compared to fossil fuels. Further, the current RFS challenges rather than incentivizing innovation, and EPA has been slow to approve new pathways that allow novel feedstocks and technologies to compete in the marketplace.