Clean Fuels notifies US EPA of intent to sue over 2026 RFS rule delay

Clean Fuels Alliance America delivered July 17 a formal notice of intent to sue U.S. EPA for its failure to issue a timely 2026 Renewable Fuel Standard rule.

By statute, EPA is required to finalize volumes 14 months before the start of the compliance year.

For 2026, that deadline would come at the end of October this year.

The White House Office of Management and Budget released the Spring 2024 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions June 28, setting out a timeline for EPA to propose the 2026 RFS volumes by March 2025 and finalize the rule by December 2025.

“EPA’s failure to timely issue the 2026 RFS volumes compounds another issue,” Clean Fuels stated in the letter. “EPA set the volumes for 2023 through 2025 too low.”

The formal notice of intent to sue EPA is available here.

“As explained in Clean Fuels’ petition for reconsideration of the 2024 and 2025 volumes, EPA set biomass-based diesel and advanced volumes for those years significantly below what the industry can achieve,” the letter continued. “The result has been a crash in RIN prices, shuttered production facilities and cancelations of planned facility expansions. While EPA can and should reconsider and revise its 2024 and 2025 volumes, it should at a minimum set a timely 2026 volume.”

Kurt Kovarik, Clean Fuels’ vice president of federal affairs, added, “Members of both the U.S. House and Senate have urged EPA to issue timely 2026 RFS volumes to mitigate the damage from the agency’s miscalculation of volumes for 2023, 2024 and 2025. Stakeholder organizations earlier this year asked EPA to ensure it met the deadline for the 2026 rule. The biodiesel, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry needs EPA to get the program back on track to support our growth. Clean Fuels provided EPA a great deal of data on our growth to support our petition to revise the 2024 and 2025 RFS volumes for biomass-based diesel and advanced biofuels. There isn’t any practical reason that would prevent the agency from meeting the legal deadline for the 2026 RFS rule.”

The July 11 letter from 37 U.S. Representatives urging EPA to issue the 2026 RFS rule is available here.

The June 12 letter from 18 U.S. Senators urging EPA to issue the 2026 RFS rule is available here.

Clean Fuels’ petition to EPA to reconsider the 2024 and 2025 RFS volumes is available here.

The April 29 letter from nine trade associations urging EPA to meet the deadline for 2026 RFS volumes is available here.