Yesterday, during a special hearing on Capitol Hill, U.S. EPA Acting Assistant Administrator Janet McCabe took a proverbial beating from numerous Senators who expressed outright displeasure with the way the agency has managed the federal renewable fuel standard (RFS).
It was chaired by Sen. Lankford, R-Oklahoma, who held McCabe's feet to the fire for the bulk of the hearing. If one thing was clear to me, it was that he had done his homework. He knew what he was talking about, and he knew the answers he wanted.
In his opening remarks, he threw out a reference to the food-verses-fuel debate, and said the RFS has had unintended consequences such as higher fuel prices, higher grocery bills&hellip;blah, blah. You know the rest. (And of course, that&rsquo;s the tiny snippet the mainstream press is highlighting in stories based on the hearing.) His goal seemed to be to make McCabe promise that the EPA deliver a timeline of events for future rulemaking&mdash;for delivering reset mandate volumes for 2017 on, and for releasing future RVO proposals on time, and to put forth a plan that would lay out whether the EPA would need rulemaking and comment processes on the actual reset process itself, just the reset numbers, or both. (Read more about it in my much-too-long <a href="http://www.biomassmagazine.com/articles/12084/epa-renewable-fuel-standard-management-scrutinized-at-hearing">story.</a>)
I later found myself on Lankin's website, and sure enough, a press release had been posted announcing that he had chaired the hearing, and it was titled something to the degree of the RFS is unrealistic and harmful to the U.S.
It then became clear to me, it wasn&rsquo;t about getting answers from McCabe&hellip;it was about NOT getting answers. His goal was to paint a very confused, unorganized and impossible-to-achieve picture of the RFS by asking as many questions that could not be answered up front. He wanted EPA to look incompetent. He wanted the RFS to look like it isn&rsquo;t working. Convenient that he was chair of the hearing, but there were numerous senators who took part in it and went to bat for the renewable fuel industry.
But, to be fair, there were plenty of very reasonable and important questions asked, too.
While most in the industry would express frustration and dissatisfaction with EPA&rsquo;s management of the RFS, the ball is in the agency&rsquo;s court. Industry needs them to get it together, and, ultimately, help them do that (submit your comments, go to the June 25 hearing in Oklahoma City, if you can). Congresspersons like Lankford and others who want to see the RFS gone use the contention between the industry and EPA as leverage&mdash;it exacerbates an already complicated and frustrating situation.
Watch a replay of the hearing <a href="http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/rafm/hearings/re-examining-epas-management-of-the-renewable-fuel-standard-program">here.</a>
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EPA's McCabe Gets Grilled at RFS Hearing

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