The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final standards for 2017 and biomass-based diesel volume for 2018 for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) moved to the last review step. EPA has sent the final standards to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for interagency review, which includes addressing input from the USDA and DOE.

In the coming days and weeks, the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) will coordinate meetings between NBB staff, with members of the RVO Working Group, and the Administration to again press our case for stronger Biomass-based Diesel and Advanced Biofuel volumes. After the OMB review, EPA will finalize the standards and release them publicly.

The EPA proposal calls for increasing the Biomass-based Diesel volume from 2 billion gallons in 2017 to 2.1 billion gallons in 2018. Additionally, it calls for increasing the overall Advanced Biofuel volume it previously set for 2016 of 3.61 billion gallons to 4 billion gallons in 2017, well below the statutorily required volume of 9 billion gallons. The American Soybean Association and NBB have made the case to revise the volumes upward to at least 2.5 billion gallons for Biomass-based Diesel for 2018 and 4.75 billion gallons for overall Advanced Biofuels for 2017.

EPA remains on pace to issue the final standards by Nov. 30. We will keep you posted on any developments.