Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota and Republican Dusty Johnson of South Dakota introduced the Renewable Fuel Standard Integrity Act into the House of Representatives last week. The goal of the legislation is to reduce the secrecy currently surrounding the small refinery exemption process and bring more certainty into the renewable fuel marketplace. “We applaud the introduction of the RFS Integrity Act and the strong bipartisan effort to restore integrity and transparency to the Renewable Fuel Standard,” says Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor. “The intent of the RFS is to blend more biofuels into our nation’s transportation fuel supply every year, not to have oil companies use questionable tactics to delay and avoid their blending obligations.” She says that creates tremendous amounts of uncertainty for farmers, biofuel producers, and the entire fuel supply chain. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t impose a clear deadline for submitting a request for an SRE. If enacted, the RFS Integrity Act would set an annual deadline of June 1 for refineries to submit SRE petitions. It would also bring greater transparency to SREs by no longer excluding the refinery’s name, the number of exempted gallons requested, and the compliance years requested from public disclosure.

RFS Integrity Act introduced in the House