EPA publishes third RFS impact report but USDA disagrees with assessment

In Washington, the Environmental Protection Agency published its third impact report on the Renewable Fuel Standard, which builds on the previous two reports, Biofuels and the Environment: First Triennial Report to Congress (2011) and Biofuels and the Environment: Second Triennial Report to Congress (2018). It reinforces the broad conclusions from the first two reports on biofuels in general and further evaluates the attribution of those effects to the RFS Program more specifically. The Third Report updates the previous assessments of the environmental impacts of the Renewable Fuel Standards Program and includes new analyses to better separate the effects of the RFS Program from the broader set of factors influencing of biofuels.

In the first two reports, EPA could not separate the effects of the RFS Program from the impact of other factors (e.g., market or other policy effects). The Third Report includes an “attribution analysis” that better separates the effects of the RFS Program from other factors that affect biofuels production and consumption in the United States.

The Third Report concludes that the effect of the Renewable Fuel Standard Program varies with time and the RFS Program had a modest positive effect on biofuel production and consumption, and thus had a modest negative effect on the environment. These endpoints include air and water quality, water quantity, ecosystem health and biodiversity, soil quality, invasive species, and international impacts. The impacts of the RFS Program overlap with the more significant effects of biofuels as an industry.

Bloomberg reports that outgoing Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsak disagreed with the EPA’s assesment, however, saying in a Jan. 17 letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson that the “USDA believes that there are critical omissions in the document and overreach in the analyses presented.”