Growth Energy, the nation’s largest biofuels trade association, recently filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in The San Antonio Refinery, LLC, et al. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The case pertains to a group of refineries seeking to avoid complying with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires oil refiners to blend a specific amount of biofuels into their fuel each year.
The petitioning refineries allege that the EPA’s “Alternative RIN Retirement Schedule for Small Refineries”—an adjustment made to allow refineries to meet their RFS obligations over an extended period of time—did not go far enough and should have allowed the refineries not to comply with the RFS at all.
Growth Energy’s amicus brief reiterates the fact that the oil industry continues to look for ways to avoid complying with the RFS. Across a range of cases, the industry has argued that EPA should not be allowed to enforce the RFS because the industry simply doesn’t want to comply, even with relaxed obligations.
“This case is no different than so many others brought by the oil industry,” said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor. “Every time EPA denies an exemption, its decision is backed by reams of data that show the supposed economic hardship that refiners face for complying with the RFS is a fiction. They almost always recover whatever it costs them to blend biofuels into their fuel mix.”
“Rather than fault EPA for failing to minimize the supposed hardship to the oil industry from the RFS – especially here, when EPA gave them even more time to comply – the oil industry should stop playing the victim and get on board with the most successful climate policy enacted to date,” Skor added. Read the full brief here
