The U.S. EPA on March 24 asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss a lawsuit filed by biofuel groups last year regarding the agency’s failure to meet the statutory deadline to promulgate 2026 Renewable Fuel Standard renewable volume obligations (RVOs) because the legal challenge was filed too soon. 

Clean Fuels Alliance America in July 2024 delivered the EPA a formal notice of intent to sue over the agency’s failure to issue timely 2026 RFS RVOs. Under statute, the EPA is required to finalize volumes 14 months before the start of a compliance year. For RFS compliance year 2026, that deadline was in October 2024. The rulemaking process to set RVOs is lengthy and takes several months to complete. 

Clean Fuels Alliance America and Growth Energy formally filed a complaint with the court in December 2024. Within the compliant, the biofuel groups explain the EPA had not yet begun the public rulemaking process despite the fact that the statutory deadline to finalize the 2026 RVOs had already passed. 

The EPA filed its response with the court on March 24 calling on the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing the biofuel groups took legal action too soon. “Plaintiffs failed to comply with the Clean Air Act requirement that parties provide EPA with 60 days’ notice of EPA’s failure to perform a non-discretionary duty under the Act before filing suit… Instead, Plaintiffs sent EPA letters months before EPA’s statutory deadline to issue regulations for the 2026 renewable fuel volumes under the Renewable Fuel Standard program, asserting EPA might miss an upcoming deadline and threatening to sue the agency before the deadlines even passed,” the EPA wrote. “Because this type of anticipatory, pre-violation notice is insufficient to satisfy the Clean Air Act’s mandatory pre-suit notice requirement, this Court should dismiss this action in its entirety.”

Clean Fuels Alliance America is urging the EPA to quickly set the 2026 RVOs. “EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has acknowledged the importance of timely, robust RVOs to meet the administration’s goals to promote homegrown energy and farm security,” said Paul Winters, director of public affairs and federal communications at Clean Fuels Alliance America. “Instead of setting a reasonable deadline to get the RFS program back on track, DOJ lawyers continue to employ delay tactics.”

The EPA was expected to issue a proposed rule to set 2026 RFS RVOs in March 2025, but seems likely to miss that deadline as well.

The White House Office of Management and Budget on Dec. 13 published the Fall 2024 Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan, which outlines rulemakings and other actions under development by federal agencies. In that document, the EPA said it planned to release a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to set the 2026 RVOs in March 2025 and finalize the rulemaking by December 2025. As of March 26, the EPA has not yet submitted a NPRM to the OMB for interagency review. The interagency review process is completed before a NPRM is released for public comment, and generally takes several months to complete. As such, the EPA is exceeding unlikely to achieve its December 2025 target date for promulgation of a 2026 RFS final rule.