This week, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and 17 other senators drafted a letter urging the Environmental Protection Agency to set high blending targets under the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) for 2017. This, they said, would be in keeping with the congressional intent and follow through on the agency commitments to get the RFS back on track. The senators noted that the EPA’s last target was lower than it should have been because the agency relied on concerns about distribution infrastructure, which Congress explicitly rejected as a reason to justify lower blending targets. “A strong RFS makes our country more energy secure, increases competition and consumer choice in our transportation sector and ultimately strengthens our economy,” the senators wrote to Administrator, Gina McCarthy. New investments in cellulosic projects continue to emerge in China, Europe and Brazil, yet since 2013, not a single new cellulosic project has broken ground in the U.S. A full listing of the senators joining Grassley and Klobuchar can be found below.
Other Senators included in the letter:
John Thune
Richard J. Durbin
Mark Kirk
Al Franken
Joni Ernst
Heidi Heitkamp
Deb Fischer
Martin Heinrich
Michael Rounds
Clair McCaskill
Roy Blunt
Debbie Stabenow
John Hoeven
Tammy Baldwin
Sherrod Brown
Gary Peters
Joe Donnelly
