NEW YORK - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler told a biofuels company on Thursday that the agency is working to address industry concerns over biofuel blending rules that have sparked outrage across the Farm Belt, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Biofuel producers and representatives of corn farmers are unhappy with the EPA’s expanded use of waivers exempting oil refineries from their annual ethanol blending requirements. They say that agency’s efforts to address the issue with proposed tweaks to the 2020 blending requirements are not enough.
The EPA has roughly quadrupled the number of waivers it has issued since President Donald Trump took office. The corn lobby, however, argues that it should instead account for actual amounts waived by the agency since the EPA in recent years has been waiving higher volumes than the DOE advised.