News

RIN Prices Continue Climb with Release of Proposed 45Z Regulations

February 3, 2026

RIN prices continued to climb after the U.S. Treasury Department and IRS released the long-awaited proposed regulations for the Clean Fuel Production Credit (commonly referred to as the 45Z tax credit). While the 45Z credit took effect on January 1, 2025, IRS had only issued interim guidance for it. This lack of regulatory clarity has contributed to delays and disruptions in biodiesel and renewable diesel production across the United States. With proposed regulations now available, renewable fuel producers eligible for the credit have gained some insights about the direction being taken by the Trump Administration. The February 3 proposed regulations... Read More →

EPA Issues Decisions Involving 16 Small Refinery Exemptions

November 7, 2025

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its decisions on 16 petitions from small refineries seeking exemptions from the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The petitions were submitted by eight refineries requesting exemptions from their RFS obligations for compliance years 2021 through 2024. EPA is granting full (100 percent) exemptions for two petitions, partial (50 percent) exemptions for 12 petitions, and denying two petitions. These decisions exempted another 740 million RINs on top of the 3 billion RINs already exempted for these compliance years by EPA in August. The Agency also updated its RFS Small Refinery Exemptions (SRE) webpage to reflect... Read More →

EPA Proposes Updates to RFS Volumes to Account for Small Refinery Exemptions

September 16, 2025

On September 16, 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did little to shed light on how small refinery exemptions (SREs) from 2023-2025 will be reallocated. While proposing two approaches — a 100% and a 50% reallocation of exempted volumes — EPA indicated it would entertain other allocations. The specifics of EPA’s proposal were detailed in a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to revise the proposed Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) “Set 2” volume requirements for 2026 and 2027. It follows on the Agency’s August 22 Small Refinery Exemption (SRE) decisions. In a strongly worded news release that accompanied the proposal, EPA... Read More →

EPA Issues Decision on 175 Small Refinery Exemption Petitions

August 22, 2025

This morning, EPA announced its decision regarding 175 small refinery petitions sitting before it. These petitions were for compliance years 2016-2024. EPA is granting a full exemption to 63 petitions, granting partial, or half, exemptions to 77 petitions, denying 28 petitions, and determining 7 petitions to be ineligible. In addition to this decision, EPA makes a lengthy argument as to where judicial review of each petition should take place, coming to the conclusion the “final actions discussed within the August 2025 SRE Decisions Action are based on determinations of nationwide scope or effect for purposed of CAA section 307(b)(1) and... Read More →

EPA Drops Two Major Rules Regarding RVOs

June 13, 2025

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the long-awaited proposed renewable volume obligations (RVOs) for 2026 and 2027 under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), as well as the final rule regarding the partial waiver of the 2024 Cellulosic Biofuel Volume Requirements. For the proposed rule, EPA set the RVOs at 24.02 billion Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) of renewable fuel in 2026, and 24.46 billion RINs in 2027. 2026 RVOs are an increase of 1.69 billion RINs over 2025 requirements. EPA is also considering a waiver for the 2025 mandate for cellulosic biofuel. Since RVOs set demand for RINs, the announcement... Read More →

Ghosts and Goblins! Office of Inspector General Releases Audit Report on Fraud Potential Within the RFS

October 11, 2023

It’s spooky season! A time filled with ghosts and goblins and…a report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) on fraud potential within the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Recently, OIG completed an audit of the RFS to identify areas of improvement to prevent opportunities for RIN fraud. The words “fraud” and “Renewable fuel Standard” or “RINs” used in the same sentence can be a little scary. I’ll admit it. When this report was first published, before I had read it, I passed it on to my boss with the message: “This doesn’t look good.” Even some of the headlines that... Read More →