The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week announced a propose plan to create a National Renewable Fuel Standard Program to comply with the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Under the program, EPA proposes to increase the volume of renewable fuel required to be blended into gasoline, starting with 4 billion gallons in calendar year 2006 and nearly doubling to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012.

A national RFS will expand the use of biodiesel and ethanol, creating new markets for farm products and greater energy security. Advanced technologies under development could make it possible to produce renewable ethanol from agricultural and industrial waste at a cost competitive with today's gas prices.

The RFS program proposed by EPA was developed in collaboration with refiners, renewable fuel producers, and many other stakeholders.

Pennsylvania uses about 6.2 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel a year. Under the EPA proposal, the use of renewable fuel additives must increase from 3 to 5.4 percent or about 33.5 million gallons by 2012.

With the switch over to using ethanol fuel mixtures in the Philadelphia area last summer, Pennsylvania is already using 120 million gallons or about 19 percent of the gasoline-diesel transportation fuels.

The Department of Environmental Protection held the second face-to-face meeting of an advisory group that is helping develop a renewable fuels mandate for Pennsylvania—the PennSecurity Fuels Initiative announced by Gov. Rendell in May.

One topic the group discussed was whether an individual state mandate made sense in light of the proposed plan developed by EPA. They also continued to review a draft legislative proposal creating the mandate and discussed appropriate triggers, compliance points and the development of the transportation, storage and distribution infrastructure needed to make the mandate work.

9/8/2006