The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has scheduled a December 11 hearing on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) that will feature testimony from Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy officials as well as industry stakeholders.
The hearing, to be held jointly by both the full committee and its subcommittee on clean air and nuclear safety, will “examine the status and effectiveness of federal policies that implement the federal RFS program,” the committee said in a statement December 5. The standard, which requires that refiners blend 36 billion gallons of ethanol or other renewable fuels into the nation’s motor supply by 2022, was lowered by the EPA for 2014, leading critics in industry and Congress to call for further changes.
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chairman of the full committee and a self-declared proponent of the RFS, had planned the hearing for earlier this year but it was postponed because of the government shutdown. Witnesses will include:
Panel I:
- Mr. Chris Grundler, Director, Office of Transportation and Air Quality, United States Environmental Protection Agency
- Mr. Steven Chalk, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Renewable Power, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, United States Department of Energy
Panel II:
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General Wesley K. Clark, Co-Chairman, Board of Directors, Growth Energy
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Mr. Jim C. Collins, Jr., Senior Vice President, Industrial Biosciences, Performance Polymers and Packaging & Industrial Polymers, DuPont
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Mr. Charles T. Drevna, President, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers
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Mr. Jon Holzfaster, Owner and Operator, Holzfaster Farm
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Mr. Scott Faber, Vice President of Government Affairs, Environmental Working Group
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Mr. Brooke Coleman, Executive Director, Advanced Ethanol Coalition
Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have been working on potential legislation to revise the standard, which was expanded in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. However, Rep. Fred Upton, the committee’s chairman, said EPA’s decision to lower the ethanol requirement in it for 2014 “stalled” those efforts.
“People have been asking on both sides of the issue” for a hearing, Boxer said in an interview earlier this year. “I like to make sure that our committee does appropriate oversight; that’s our role on everything we have responsibility for, and RFS is one of them.”
