Small refinery exemptions (SREs) continue as a source of scorn for biofuel backers, with the National Biodiesel Board and 33 biodiesel producers calling on the Trump administration to boost mandates for biodiesel.
“Small refinery waivers destroy demand for all biofuels across the board, with a significant impact on domestic biodiesel and renewable diesel producers,” the firms said in a letter to President Donald Trump. “Every small refinery waiver issued by the Environmental Protection Agency has the potential to put a U.S. biodiesel producer out of business.” The letter noted that small refiners can produce nearly one billion gallons of fuel in a year, with the biodiesel requirements requiring the blending of about 20 million gallons of biodiesel or renewable diesel annually. The companies said that amounts to a “very small fraction” of total fuel production.
The 31 SREs granted for the 2018 compliance year amount to 1.4 billion gallons of renewable fuels not being used, the letter noted, including “millions of gallons of biodiesel and renewable diesel in the biomass-based biodiesel, advanced and overall volumes.”
This comes as the administration continues to work on a biofuel policy plan, a package that USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue told reporters Tuesday would make farmers “happy” and still “save small refiners from certain closing.”
Discussions are still ongoing, Perdue noted. “The best answer is it is still in process,” he said, including discussing “how we can recover some of the small refinery waivers that were given, from a gallons perspective.”
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