EPA increases biofuel mandate despite court order

[Geee]

Washington Times:

Just one week after a federal court rebuked the Environmental Protection Agency for mandating biofuel standards based on “wishful thinking,” the EPA responded by raising those standards to even more unattainable levels.

The EPA called for refiners and importers to mix 14 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels (ethanol) into fuel in 2013. “EPA calculates a percentage-based standard for the following year,” the agency explained in an announcement today. “Based on the standard, each refiner and importer determines the minimum volume of renewable fuel that it must ensure is used in its transportation fuel.”

This projection ignores last week’s ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which struck down a rule requiring gasoline blenders to use 8.65 million gallons of the cellulosic biofuel because the mandate “was based on wishful thinking rather than realistic estimates of what could be achieved,” as The New York Times explained. Per Consumer Energy Report notes, the fuel isn’t commercially available.