The American Soybean Association (ASA) welcomed news last week that the Environmental Protection Agency will propose the volume requirements for biomass-based diesel for 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 by June 1, 2015 and finalize them by November 30, 2015. In addition to the 2014 and 2015 volume requirements, EPA announced the same timeline for establishing the biomass-based diesel volumes for 2016 and 2017. ASA President Wade Cowan, a farmer from Brownfield, Texas, noted the association’s cautious optimism in a statement Friday afternoon:

“This announcement provides encouragement that EPA will get the RFS implementation back on track and provide greater certainty and stability to the U.S. biodiesel industry. ASA has been urging EPA and the White House to address the overdue RFS volume requirements and move forward immediately on finalizing increased volumes for biomass-based diesel, and we met with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in late March and pressed this issue.

“As good as this news is, however, there are still questions that remain regarding the volume levels that EPA will propose for 2014-2017. We will continue to work closely with the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) to advocate the appropriate volumes for the program. EPA has indicated that it will propose volume requirements for 2014 that ‘reflect the volumes of renewable fuel that were actually used in 2014.’ The total amount of biomass based diesel utilized in 2014 was approximately 1.75 billion gallons. From there, ASA will continue making a case to EPA and the Administration to provide modest and achievable annual increases in the biomass-based diesel volumes.”