Lawyers for biofuel companies and EPA returned Tuesday to the perennial struggle over small refinery exemptions from biofuel-blending mandates.
In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, trade groups including Growth Energy and Clean Fuels Alliance America (formerly the National Biodiesel Board) urged a three-judge panel to open the way for EPA to increase future biofuel mandates to make up for past refinery exemptions.
To do so, judges would have to revisit regulations EPA wrote in 2020 and decide whether the agency’s subsequent rulemaking renders the industry group’s lawsuit moot.
Tuesday’s oral arguments in the case, Clean Fuels Alliance America v. EPA, didn’t appear to telegraph a decision strongly in one direction or another, but judges peppered lawyers with questions about how to reconcile the five-year-old regulations the group challenged with a more recent rulemaking that appears to address the issue in more detail.
