Ethanol Blog

LINCOLN, Neb. (DTN) -- A federal appeals court this week denied a motion from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to rescind the agency's 2023 denial of 26 small-refinery exemptions to the Renewable Fuel Standard, instead ruling that a series of legal challenges to the action will continue into 2025.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an order on Dec. 23, 2024, essentially denying the agency's motion for a voluntary remand in a case and similar cases consolidated in Calumet Montana Refining, LLC v EPA.

In July 2023, EPA announced it had denied 26 of 28 SRE requests that were pending at the time.

The EPA denied 36 exemption requests all from 2018 RFS compliance. All but three of those petitioners have sued the agency. The agency also denied 69 petitions in June 2022.

See more on this case, https://www.dtnpf.com/….

ENVIROS GO AFTER BIOFUELS IN CALIFORNIA

Environmental groups have challenged the state of California in its use of biofuels including ethanol, to meet the needs of the state's low-carbon fuel standard.

Communities for a Better Environment, a non-profit organization, filed a lawsuit on Dec. 18, 2024, in Superior Court of the State of California in Fresno County.

The group alleges that the California Air Resources Board has violated the California Environmental Quality Act in its treatment of biofuels in the LCFS.

The lawsuit asks the court to order the state to reassess biofuels and their effects on the environment.

"Although technical advances since the LCFS's inception have enabled widespread availability of zero-emissions electric vehicles, the lion's share of LCFS revenues incentivize polluting fuels like biofuels rather than EV technologies," the lawsuit said.

"Biofuels derived from food crops are of particular concern because they cause a host of adverse impacts to vulnerable communities when they are grown, when they are refined, and when they are combusted in vehicles. Biofuel feedstock cultivation is linked to increased global food insecurity and deforestation, biofuel refining increases exposure to toxic and criteria air pollution in surrounding communities, and biofuel combustion in vehicles emits pollution that harms Californians already breathing unhealthy air."

The group said the state had "brushed aside evidence" on the "significant harms from crop-based biofuels and the need for the amendments to include effective limits on their participation in the program."

Earlier this year, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom directed the California Air Resources Board to take steps to allow E15 sales for the first time in the state, indicating the state is open to further expanding the use of biofuels, https://www.dtnpf.com/….

"CARB's decision to direct billions of dollars to polluting fuels for decades to come will cause substantial impacts to the environment and human health," the groups said in the lawsuit.

"Despite years of effort by petitioner and other members of the public to alert CARB to the gravity of these impacts and the deficiencies of CARB's environmental review, CARB failed adequately to disclose, analyze, and mitigate these and other foreseeable environmental impacts before approving the project. CARB's findings and statement of overriding considerations, adopted in connection with the project, are also invalid both because they unlawfully purport to override impacts that can and should have been analyzed and mitigated more fully and because they are not based on substantial evidence supporting either the purported benefits of the project or the environmental effects being outweighed."

Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@dtn.com

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