EPA publishes renewable fuels data for April 2017

The US Environmental Protection Agency has published its Renewable Identification Numbers (RIN) generation data for April 2017.

Created in 2005 under that year’s Energy Policy Act, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is a national policy requiring a certain volume of renewable fuel to replace or reduce the quantity of petroleum-based transportation fuel, heating oil of jet fuel. Four renewable fuel categories are covered under the RFS: biomass-based diesel, cellulosic ethanol, advanced biofuel and total renewable fuel. RINs are issued for compliance with the RFS, sometimes labelled the programme’s currency.

In April, more than 181 million gallons of biomass based diesel was produced, generating more than 279 million RINs. Over 5 million gallons of advanced biofuel (D5) were produced, and just over 7 million RINs, while for cellulosic biofuel (D3) the figures for RINs generated and gallons of fuel produced were both 17,293,229.

According to the EPA’s latest figures, by May 2017 a net 49,909,429 RINs had been generated for cellulosic biofuel, 970,854,520 for biomass-based diesel, 22,673,982 for advanced biofuel, and 4,872,284,457 for renewable fuels.

The EPA's figures show that no RINs have been generated for D7 cellulosic ethanol since the start of 2017.