EnergyRenewable fuel standard: mend it, don’t end it
Congress should minimally modify — and not, as petroleum-related interests have increasingly lobbied for, repeal — the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the most comprehensive renewable energy policy in the United States, according to a new paper. The paper argues that RFS mandates merely ought to be adjusted to reflect current and predicted biofuel commercialization realities.
Congress should minimally modify — and not, as petroleum-related interests have increasingly lobbied for, repeal — the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the most comprehensive renewable energy policy in the United States, according to a new paper from two University of Illinois researchers.
A University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign release reports that in the study, U. of I. law professor Jay P. Kesan and Timothy A. Slating, a regulatory associate with the Energy Biosciences Institute, argue that RFS mandates merely ought to be adjusted to reflect current and predicted biofuel commercialization realities.
“The RFS is the first and only federal policy that directly mandates the use of renewable energy in the worthwhile effort to displace the use of fossil fuels for our energy needs,” said Kesan, who also is the principal investigator for the Biofuel Law and Regulation project at the institute.
“As with any pioneering regulatory regime, unforeseen implementation issues will arise,” Kesan said. “But this does not justify throwing out the baby with the bath water. Every effort should be made to keep the RFS in place, but efforts should also be made to revise its regulatory regime to make it operate as efficiently as possible.”
In the paper, Kesan and Slating contend that the RFS can serve as a “model policy instrument” for the federal support of all types of socially beneficial renewable energy technologies.
“By mandating a market for emerging biofuels, it sends a clear signal that if they are produced, they will be effectively commercialized,” said Slating, who also is an adjunct professor in the law school. “This, in turn, provides the necessary certainty to free up credit constraints and incentivize investment in the socially beneficial biofuels industry.
Additionally, it does so with very little impact on the federal budget because regulated parties bear its costs.”
“While the federal government has traditionally incentivized renewable energy development through tax credits and funding R&D grants, these approaches are more costly than simply mandating a market,” said Kesan, who also holds U. of I. appointments in the College of Business, the Institute for Genomic Biology, the department of electrical and computer engineering, and the department of agricultural and consumer economics.
The researchers also contend that the biofuel categories of the RFS ought to be expanded to encompass all emerging biofuel technologies, as well as having its biomass sourcing constraints relaxed.
