BOSTON, June 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Boston Based Advanced Biofuel producer, World Energy, LLC (World Energy) provided the following insights on the proposed 2019 Renewable Volume Obligation released today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Today’s RFS proposed rule comes during a time of considerable EPA-generated RFS uncertainty. Its release offers an opportunity for the EPA to provide the market clarity which is so important to the Renewable Fuels industry. Unfortunately, the Agency has not proposed an adequate solution to the problems created from its recent, issuing of what has been reported as more than 25 Small Refiner Exemptions (SREs) These exemptions created behind closed doors and without any transparency or apparent adherence to the statute and has caused demand destruction of an estimated 1.7 billion gallons of renewable fuels. It is worth noting that the average number of SRE’s in past years has been 6.
Over the last several months, reports have surfaced that EPA has been taking actions without any public notice or comment, resulting in uncertainty within the markets and disrupting delicate supply/demand balances. In addition, EPA has reportedly been secretly issuing wholesale waivers to individual companies of previous year volume obligations, enabling obligated parties to flood current year markets with RIN’s they anticipated using for RFS compliance but now no longer need. Then, more recent reports reveal that EPA is authorizing obligated parties to secretly generate free current year RIN’s which have never been attached to any physical biofuel gallons. This leads to further RIN dumping into the supply pool and curtails demand by incenting obligated parties to slow down or even stop compliance based RIN buying and shift to pursuing waivers they never dreamed might be available to them.
Law abiding obligated parties and biofuel suppliers are paying a severe price for EPA’s issuance of unprecedented wholesale waivers and the doling out of free current year RINs to companies pursuing compliance avoidance techniques even as many of those companies continue to post billions in profits. Ironically, EPA is taking these secret actions through what is known as economic hardship waivers yet without disclosing the criteria used to establish what constitutes “economic hardship”. In truth, this practice must stop immediately, if only to establish a fair and reasonable assessment that all parties can evaluate and understand. Without that, the 2019-20 RVO’s are meaningless. Until EPA publicly discloses how and on what grounds it has issued the SRE’s, what it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.
About World Energy World Energy is one of the largest and longest serving advanced biofuel suppliers in North America. Founded in 1998, the company is headquartered in Boston, MA and operates manufacturing plants in Houston, TX, Natchez, MS, Rome, GA, Harrisburg, PA, Paramount, CA, Hamilton, ON, and Sombra, ON.
Contact Erin Donnette edonnette@worldenergy.net 562-748-2788
