The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Energy Project seeks your input as part of a yearlong effort aimed at fostering constructive dialogue and action on reforming the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).
BPC commissioned a series of background papers on various RFS topics. The last three papers, summarized below, approach the RFS from the perspectives of policy and law, considering both the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority as well as broader federal regulations.
Inventory of Federal Regulations Affecting Biofuels other than the Renewable Fuel Standard [Read here]
Van Ness Feldman
- “Although the RFS has been the key driver in the production and use of biofuels in recent years, there are a number of other provisions in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) that directly or indirectly create incentives or barriers to the use of biofuels in the vehicle transportation sector.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Authority to Amend the Renewable Fuel Standard [Read here]
Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP
- “EPA is proposing to exercise its waiver authority to reduce the 2014 RFS mandates based on a finding that there ‘inadequate domestic supply.’… EPA’s determination would be upheld unless it is arbitrary and capricious.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Authority to Amend the Renewable Fuel Standard [Read here]
Bracewell & Giuliani LLP
- “With each EPA decision and court decision, a path of precedent is being laid that EPA should consider in making its future volume decisions. To be upheld, each decision must be consistent with prior waiver decisions or otherwise be adequately supported by a record showing why departure from prior decisions is rational. Given the strong competing interests at stake in waiving annual volume requirements, judicial challenges of each of EPA’s decisions are highly likely.”
Please share your reaction to one or more of the perspectives detailed in these papers. Further, what are the most important legal and policy issues for regulators and legislators to consider as they move forward with reforming the RFS? How will future policy options for the RFS be impacted by these issues?
BPC is convening a diverse RFS advisory group to discuss opportunities for reform, hosting public workshops to solicit broad input, and ultimately publishing viable policy options based, in part, on the advisory group’s deliberations.
These discussions about aspects of the RFS miss the central point: It was a mistake to have written into law any mandate for biofuels, but especially one of the magnitude… Read more »
The most important legal and policy issue to consider is that the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is actually working as it was originally intended to by Congress. The RFS is opening… Read more »
RFS2 is an unmitigated disaster and has achieved the exact opposite of its intentions in almost every possible way. Both the US and German National Academies of Science have published… Read more »
Bombshell reported in the Telegraph today — UN Rejects Biofuels. If this leaked report proves to be legitimate, it will show that the same IPCC scientists that define the climate… Read more »
The EISA RFS is wrought with legal and regulatory issues because of high expectations and conflicting mandates along with uncertainty. Usually policy is established first and then regulations are promulgated… Read more »
Policy that encourages renewable fuels is good for the nation. Picking winners, as they did with ethanol, and most egregiously first with corn ethanol and then with the techno-economically difficult cellulosic ethanol,… Read more »
Produce a “renewable” fuel that requires no fossil fuel inputs for fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide, cultivation, harvest, designer enzymes, yeast starter, organic chemical feedstock, process heat, plant energy, transportation energy, refining… Read more »
Ike: To loosely quote Voltaire, perfect is the enemy of good. We have to chip away at fossil fuels. My current favorite is catalytic pyrolysis of slash (left over scraps… Read more »
Vikram, It sounds to me like you are concerned about the 40% of the world’s population (2.8 billion) who today rely on wood, charcoal, and dung for heating and cooking… Read more »
By way of update to Bracewell & Giuliani’s white paper, which analyzes EPA’s legal authority to fix problems with the RFS, I wanted to let readers know that oral argument was held on… Read more »