EPA posts call-in information for Oct. 30 hearing on SRE proposal
The U.S. EPA has posted call-in information for its Oct. 30 hearing on the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking released Oct. 15 that seeks comments on how the agency should project the volume of small refinery exemptions (SREs) in future annual Renewable Fuel Standard rulemakings to set annual renewable volume obligations (RVOs).
The rulemaking has been slammed by those in the biofuels industry as a bait-and-switch. While the original SRE deal the industry was briefed on was to use a three-year rolling average of actual SRE waived volumes to predict future waived volumes, the rulemaking released by EPA on Oct. 15 proposes to use a three-year rolling average of U.S. DOE SRE recommendations, rather than actual exemptions, to project future waived volumes. Unlike data on actual waived SRE volumes, DOE recommendations are not publicly available and have largely been disregarded by the EPA in recent years during its process to evaluate and approve or deny SRE applications.
The EPA will hold a hearing Oct. 30 on the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The hearing will begin at 9:00 a.m. EST and end when all parties who wish to speak have had an opportunity to do so. A listen-only conference line is available for the event. The call-in information is now available on the EPA website.
A public comment period on the proposed rule is also open through Nov. 29. Comments can be filed online at www.Regulations.gov under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2019-0136.
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