The U.S. EPA announced a major change in the agency’s perspective on granting small refinery exemptions (SREs) under the renewable fuel standard. In short, EPA will apply the ruling of the 10th District Federal Court of Appeals decision on granting SREs.   Recall that in January 2020, the Court ruled that EPA went beyond its authority in granting three different SREs for 2016 and 2017; this decision came on a case filed by a number of producer and biofuels groups in 2018.   The Court ruled that none of the three refineries consistently received an SRE prior to their 2016 exemption petitions, so therefore the EPA had exceeded its authority to grant extensions of the SREs “because there was nothing to extend&...

TAGS – Biofuels, Energy, North America