The American Fuel & Petrochemicals Manufacturers on Nov. 1 petitioned the U.S. EPA to waive a portion of the compliance year 2024 Renewable Fuel Standard renewable volume obligation (RVO) for cellulosic biofuel.
In its petition, AFPM claims the waiver is necessary due to a shortfall in cellulosic biofuel production. The organization is also asking EPA to make available cellulosic waiver credits.
“EPA’s failure to exercise its waiver authorities and make credits available will harm U.S. refineries and consumers and create additional volatility in the cellulosic RIN market,” AFPM wrote in the petition. “AFPM also requests that EPA take concrete steps to address the wholly insufficient RIN bank for cellulosic biofuel, consistent with the information that AFPM has provided regarding the 2023 and 2024 cellulosic biofuel production shortfalls.”
RFA regulations allow the EPA to waive cellulosic biofuel RVOs when production falls short of the agency’s projections. AFPM issued a similar petition in late 2023 seeking a partial waiver of compliance year 2023 cellulosic biofuel RVOs. The EPA in March 2024 denied that petition.
Within its Nov. 1 petition, AFPM cites calculations completed by Turner, Mason & Co. that estimates the 2024 cellulosic RVO at 1.092 billion renewable identification numbers (RINs). AFPM predicts 1.035 billion cellulosic RINs will be generated in 2024, with a 2023 cellulosic RIN carryover of 30 million, resulting in an 88 million cellulosic RIN shortfall. AFPM cited similar calculations in its 2023 petition. In denying that petition, the EPA said AFPM’s calculations appeared to use the same data sources as its internal assessment, but stressed that the calculations did not seem to follow the same methodologies as those used by EPA. For example, AFPM had excluded cellulosic RINs that had already been retired from its calculation of net cellulosic RIN production and failed to exclude volumes of non-obligated transportation fuels from its calculations.
In its 2023 rulemaking that set RFS RVOs for 2023, 2024 and 2025, the EPA set the 2024 RVO for cellulosic biofuel at 0.63%. At that time, the agency estimated the 0.63% RVO would require 1.09 billion cellulosic RINs to satisfy. The actual number of RINs required to meet the RVO is dependent on the volume of obligated transportation fuel supplied to the U.S. market during the compliance period. The most recently available RIN data published by the EPA indicates that 638.48 cellulosic RINs were generated under the RFS during the first nine months of 2024.
A full copy of the AFPM’s petition is available on the EPA website.
