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Are India’s clean energy investments slowing the march of coal?

Are India’s clean energy investments slowing the march of coal?

By on 19 Oct 2015commentsShare

Chinese investment in the Indian renewable energy sector has skyrocketed recently, and construction equipment manufacturer Sany Group is the latest to join the push. The company announced last week that it will direct $3 billion toward the development of at least two gigawatts of renewable energy capacity in India, largely in the states of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. That’s a lot of cash and a lot of capacity, and announcements like these check a solid handful of other sustainable development boxes: expansion of renewables, money flowing between developing countries, private sector partnerships — chalk it up to a win for the climate.

Right?

Stories of clean energy investment tend to be good news for environmentalists, but in this case, there’s the danger of missing the forest for the banyan trees. The key here is understanding the difference between climate action and pure economic development motives. India currently has upwards of 250 million people without electricity. It would take somewhere on the order of 225 terawatt hours annually to bring them online — making the projected 4.8 terawatt hours from Sany Group’s two gigawatts seem like relatively small potatoes. When it comes to energy policy, the main goal is shrinking that 250 million figure as quickly as possible. Which is exactly what coal power can do.

But wait! With substantial investment, couldn’t rural India leapfrog coal and satisfy climate aims and development goals at the same time? Presumably, the answer rests on the affordability of decentralized solar power. Over at Scientific American, though, Gayathri Vaidyanathan tells a different story:

The fallacy in this position, others argue, is that solar microgrids do not address climate change. The microgrids do not displace coal use because the target villages were never hooked to the central grid in the first place. In fact, in parts of India, microgrids have become a stopgap solution for the energy-poor while they wait for the central grid.

“I’d agree 100 percent this is primarily a development solution, not a climate solution,” said Justin Guay, climate program officer at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation who was previously with the Sierra Club.

That more renewable energy doesn’t necessarily imply fewer emissions is a central truth that’s easy to forget. After China and the United States, India is the third-highest carbon emitter globally, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed no intention of changing that.

In the run-up to the Paris climate negotiations, India submitted a pledge to develop 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022. For reference, the entire world’s 2014 renewable capacity was 181 GW. And vis-à-vis the previous point, renewable energy capacity isn’t necessarily a marker of climate action. Over roughly the same time period, India is expected to build between 170 and 200 GW worth of coal power capacity. Sany Group’s investment is expected to prevent close to 4 million tons of carbon emissions annually, but India is expected to triple its emissions to 5.8 billion tons by 2030. Modi has previously said that he will not announce a peak emissions date for the country.

Of course, India’s per capita emissions are drastically lower than those of most developed and several developing countries. Morally (and financially) speaking, nobody really expects India to stop its coal-driven development unless someone else is picking up the tab. Sany Group’s announcement is a suggestion that China is trying to do exactly that, but China isn’t enough — and Sany Group is presumably investing in India’s renewable sector for economic, not environmental, reasons.

All told, it’ll take at least $2.5 trillion worth of investment for India to meet its energy goals, and these are goals that ultimately have very little to do with a decrease in the country’s carbon emissions. In India, coal is still king, and its reign is far from over.

Source:

Coal Trumps Solar in India

, Scientific American.

China’s Sany Group To Invest $3 Billion In Renewable Energy In India

, CleanTechnica.

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Are India’s clean energy investments slowing the march of coal?

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China Adopts an Unusual Approach to Fighting a Stock Market Crash

Mother Jones

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Hum de hum hum. Greece is in trouble. Puerto Rico too. And don’t forget China:

Chinese shares plunged Thursday, even as Beijing grasps for solutions to stem the selling, including relaxing rules on the use of borrowed funds to invest in stocks….The Shanghai Composite closed down 3.5% while the smaller Shenzhen market was down 5.6%. The ChiNext board, composed of small-cap stocks, sank 4%. Even after losing nearly a quarter of its value from a mid-June high, China’s main stock market has almost doubled in value over the past year.

….In a rare move late Wednesday, Chinese regulators set in motion draft proposals to ease restrictions on margin lending earlier than scheduled….Regulators’ sudden shift in attitude about margin trading comes after vocal warnings about its risks in recent months. In April, regulators took various steps to rein in the practice, which had allowed investors to borrow several times their investment money.

Inscrutable, those Chinese. Their stock market is crashing so they’re promoting an increase in margin trading. That’s sort of like lighting a tree on fire when it gets dark outside and all your flashlights are dead. It’ll work. For a while. But it’s really not considered best practice.

Then again, maybe there’s something I don’t understand here. All I know is that panicky measures to halt a panic don’t usually work. And the Chinese stock market still has a long way to fall. I sure hope they figure something out.

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China Adopts an Unusual Approach to Fighting a Stock Market Crash

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House Set to Vote on Fast-Track Trade Authority

Mother Jones

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The House is expected to vote today on the “fast track” trade authority bill that would allow the Obama administration to finish negotiating several major trade agreements now under discussion, including the divisive Trans-Pacific Partnership.

While every other president from Ford onward has been granted similar powers, today’s vote has turned out to be anything but routine. Critics who oppose the TPP and other pending agreements are working to stop the bill—and thwart the anticipated trade deals.

The fast-track process was set out in 1974’s Trade Act, which empowered Congress to pass Trade Promotion Authority bills—like the one slated to be voted on today—that allow presidents to negotiate and sign trade deals with less involvement from the legislative branch. Congress still gets to vote yes or no on any final agreement, but amendments are generally prohibited. In exchange, TPA bills let legislators lay out trade priorities and negotiating objectives for the president, and set requirements on how and how often the administration must check in while negotiations are underway.

This TPA, if passed, will guide presidential trade negotiations through 2021. It builds upon a bill that expired in 2007, and is likely more complex than any other in history, expanding congressional oversight and consultation while including new provisions on intellectual property, cross-border data protection, and the environment and human rights. It also increases transparency, requiring presidential administrations to make agreements public 60 days before signing them.

Though it passed the Senate by a vote of 62 to 37 in May, today’s House vote is expected to be much closer. Some Republicans have said they may vote against fast-track authority because they aren’t eager to hand over more power to the Obama administration. Many Democrats are opposing the bill, citing concerns that it doesn’t do enough to prevent overly secret deals and the expanded corporate power that could come with them.

If the House does vote to reestablish fast-track authority, it would likely ease the finalization of several notable trade agreements, including the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a new agreement with the European Union; the Trade in Services Agreement, an initiative being negotiated between 23 economies focused specifically on service industries like telecommunications and tech; and, of course, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive trade agreement involving 12 countries that together account for 40 percent of global GDP.

Unions, environmentalists, digital rights advocates, and other advocacy groups have campaigned heavily against the Pacific deal—and the TPA that would allow negotiations to move forward. Critics have suggested the trade deal could bring environmental and labor abuses, reduce internet freedom, increase the cost of certain medications, and expand “investor-state-dispute settlements”—tribunals where companies can seek damages from taxpayers when US regulations interfere with their business. Backers of the Trans-Pacific Partnership insist that the agreement will be huge boon for the economy and increase the US national income by $77 billion annually.

Despite the opposition, House Republicans are confident the bill will pass. If it fails, its possible that negotiations on the TPP could continue—but not without major complications.

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House Set to Vote on Fast-Track Trade Authority

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EPA Announcement Will Have Consequences for the Future of Advanced Biofuels

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EPA Announcement Will Have Consequences for the Future of Advanced Biofuels

Posted 4 May 2015 in

National

Next month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will release the renewable fuel volumes for 2014, 2015, and 2016 — an important step in determining the future of renewable fuel in our country.

In the decade since the passage of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), companies have invested billions to make the United States the world leader in biofuels production. As a result, renewable fuel production has tripled, oil imports are at their lowest level in decades, and our environmental, energy and national security have improved dramatically.

As President Obama and the EPA prepare to make this announcement, they should understand the consequences that their decision will have.

Uncertainty Has Discouraged Investment
According to a new report from the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the EPA’s delays in issuing timely rules have caused a $13.7 billion shortfall in investment for cellulosic and new advanced technologies. Since 2009, the advanced biofuel industry has invested billions of dollars to build demonstration and commercial-scale biorefineries, but the EPA’s failure to release the 2013 and 2014 renewable fuel volumes on time has created uncertainty that has frozen investment.

Opponents’ Predictions Have Proven Wrong
Over the years, opponents of the Renewable Fuel Standard have predicted that renewable fuels would cause gasoline prices to skyrocket. The truth? Since the RFS was enacted in August 2005, the inflation-adjusted price of gasoline has fallen by roughly 50 cents per gallon.

Since oil companies control the retail infrastructure through which fuel is distributed, the RFS has been crucial to ensuring that consumers have a choice at the pump. In turn, the renewable fuel industry has delivered significant economic, environmental, and national security benefits for our nation.

It’s not too late to put the Renewable Fuel Standard back on track, and make sure that renewable fuel has a strong future in the United States.

Will the next generation of renewable fuel be made in the United States or China? It’s up to you, Mr. President.

Read the full white paper: Estimating Chilled Investment for Advanced Biofuels Due to RFS Uncertainty

Read the new letter from biofuels industry leaders to President Obama.

Fuels America News & Stories

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EPA Announcement Will Have Consequences for the Future of Advanced Biofuels

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New Retirement Regs Might Pose a Campaign Problem for Republicans

Mother Jones

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Congress is now controlled by Republicans, and it’s unlikely they’re going to pass any of the items on President Obama’s agenda. But what about executive actions? Are there any more of those left in Obama’s toolkit?

Jared Bernstein says yes. Forty years ago, when rules were set regarding retirement programs, most retirement funds were managed by corporations or unions, and it was assumed that the fund managers were financially sophisticated. This meant the rules could be fairly light. But that’s obviously changed: most pensions these days are IRA and 401(k) accounts that are managed by individuals who often have a hard time telling good advice from bad:

The result was a lot of people without a lot of investment acumen trying to wade through thickets of annuities, bonds, securities, and index funds, often guided by advisors and brokers who they assumed were wholly on their side.

Many were — but research shows that many were, and are — not always acting in their clients’ best interest, generating unnecessary fees and charges that erode retirement savings. The newly proposed rule, which does not require Congressional approval, meaning it could actually come to fruition, realigns incentives in the interest of individual investors by requiring retirement financial advisers to follow an established standard (a “fudiciary standard”) to act in their clients’ interest.

….The new fiduciary standard should block what honest brokers call “over-managing:” unnecessary rollovers, churning (over-active buying and selling that generates brokers’ fees at the expense of returns), and the pushing of expensive and risky products like variable annuities.

All of which turns out to be extremely costly to retirees….Conflicted advice reduces returns by about 1 percent per year, such that a poorly advised saver might end up with a 5 percent vs. a 6 percent return. They multiply that 1 percent by the $1.7 trillion of IRA assets “invested in products that generally provide payments that generate conflicts of interest” and conclude that the “the aggregate annual cost of conflicted advice is about $17 billion each year.”

According to Bernstein, a White House study suggests that this difference between 5 and 6 percent returns can amount to five years of retirement savings under plausible assumptions. That’s a lot.

Needless to say, the financial industry is strongly opposed to this rule change, and I think we can safely assume that this means Fox News will be raising the alarums too. Their argument, apparently, is that if they’re prohibited from giving small clients bad advice, it just won’t be worth it to bother with small clients at all. Maybe so. But as Bernstein says, if that’s really the case then “maybe there’s a hitch in your business model.”

This has the potential to be an interesting campaign issue. Most Democrats, even those with close ties to the financial industry (*cough* Hillary *cough*) should have no trouble supporting this rule change. That’s a slam dunk winner with retirees and most of the middle class. Republicans will have a harder time. After all, this represents regulation, and Republicans oppose regulation. They especially oppose financial regulation, as they’ve proven by their relentless efforts to roll back even the modest Dodd-Frank regulation adopted after the financial crash.

So what will they do? Stick to their principles and oppose the new regs? That will sure provide Democrats with an easy sound bite. Jeb Bush opposes a rule that prevents brokers from deliberately giving you bad retirement advice. I don’t think I’d like to be the candidate who has to answer for that.

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New Retirement Regs Might Pose a Campaign Problem for Republicans

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There’s a Big Coal Giveaway in the Cromnibus Bill

Mother Jones

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This story originally was originally published by The Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The 1,000-page omnibus spending package released Tuesday night is reigniting a fight over rules for U.S. financing of coal plants abroad.

In October 2013, the Treasury Department announced that it would stop providing funding for conventional coal plants abroad, except in “very rare” cases. And in December 2013, the Export-Import Bank announced a new policy that would restrict financing for most new coal-fired power plants abroad. The bank, often called Ex-Im, exists to provide financial support to projects that spur the export of U.S. products and services. The change in coal policy aligned with President Barack Obama’s June 2013 call to end US funding of fossil fuel energy projects abroad unless the products include carbon capture technology.

But the language in the omnibus blocks both Ex-Im and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the US’s development finance institution, from using any funds in the bill to enforce these new restrictions on coal projects.

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chair of the House Committee on Appropriations, touted this prohibition in his statement on the spending package. He said the measure would help “to increase exports of US goods and services.” Rogers told The Hill that coal exports “are just about the only bright light in the coal business these days.”

Environmental groups have fought for years to get the government’s financial institutions to stop funding fossil fuel projects abroad, including a number of coal-fired power plants, mines, pipelines and natural gas export terminals. Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica said in a statement that including this rider in the omnibus “undercuts one of the most important contributions President Obama has made to climate policy internationally.”

“This continued desperate attempt by Republicans to prop up the moribund coal industry is a fools errand,” Justin Guay, associate director of the international climate program at the Sierra Club, told The Huffington Post. “The coal industry is a dead man walking; it’s time to align our economy with an industry that actually has a future.”

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There’s a Big Coal Giveaway in the Cromnibus Bill

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Dear U.N.: Coal plants don’t count as climate-friendly projects

Dear U.N.: Coal plants don’t count as climate-friendly projects

By on 4 Dec 2014 12:43 pmcommentsShare

One of the ways the U.N. hopes to help developing countries prepare for climate change is through a mechanism called the Green Climate Fund (GCF). In 2009, rich countries pledged to come up with $100 billion a year, by 2020, to help poorer parts of the world get ready to face a problem that they, by and large, didn’t cause.

So far, rich nations have pledged about $10 billion. That’s not nearly enough, and it might end up being even less if countries don’t make good on their pledges (for instance, if Congress succeeds in blocking Obama from delivering the $3 billion the U.S. recently promised).

A healthy portion of the commitments so far have come from Japan. Way to lead, Japan! Right? Well, maybe not so fast. An Associated Press investigation found that around a billion dollars of what Japan had told the U.N. was “climate financing” to poorer nations actually went to fund coal plants built in Indonesia by Japanese companies. The AP reports:

Japan says these plants burn coal more efficiently and are therefore cleaner than old coal plants.

However, they still emit twice as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide as plants running on natural gas. Villagers near the Cirebon plant in Indonesia also complain that stocks of shrimp, fish and green mussels have dwindled.

Japan claims that it didn’t (technically) do anything wrong, and (technically) it seems to be right. But building coal plants in poor areas isn’t exactly what the U.N. means when it refers to “climate financing.”

“Unabated coal has no room in the future energy system,” Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s point person on climate change, told the AP. “Over time, what we should be seeing is a very, very clear trend of investment into clean renewable energy.”

The big takeaway from this story is that the U.N. just doesn’t have rules for what is “climate financing” and what isn’t. But it will have to get some if the Green Climate Fund is to reach its funding goals and spend the money in ways that are at all worth countries making commitments in the first place.

Around 300 environmental groups sent a letter to the fund’s board yesterday urging the board to get on it — to rule out “financing fossil fuel and other harmful energy projects or programs.”

“What this tells is that wealthy countries may view the GCF as a way to greenwash what they want to finance anyway,” wrote Kyle Ash, Greenpeace’s senior legislative representative, in a statement to Grist. “The GCF Board should agree to an absolute ban on any fossil fuel investments, and send a broad communication to follow the U.S. lead on banning public investment in financing of coal projects abroad.” Or at least trying to.

“It defies reason that we have to raise this issue with the UNFCCC/GCF at all,” said Samantha Smith, the leader of the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative.

The U.N. acknowledged to the AP that the current situation isn’t ideal and needs to be fixed. The GCF’s board will be meeting in February and will at that point consider an “exclusion list” — a list of types of projects that should not receive funding.

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A Place With the Population of West Virginia Just Powered A Work Day Entirely on Clean Energy

Mother Jones

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Here’s one for the naysayers who insist renewable energy can’t keep the lights on and power our cities. An entire state in Australia with a population of around 1.7 million people just used renewable energy to meet 100 percent of its electricity needs throughout an entire working day. According to industry news site Energy Business News:

Between 9.30 and 6pm on Tuesday, September 30, a day not unlike most Tuesdays, with business and homes using electricity as usual, the state received the favourable weather conditions allowing solar and wind infrastructure to work side by side to achieve the impressive achievement.

The analysis comes from Pitt & Sherry, an Australian energy consultancy. As the wind picked up, all but two of the state’s coal-fired power generators, and one gas-powered unit, were shut down; the excess power was exported to other regions, according to the report. There were a few moments during the previous days—on September 27 and 28—when the state actually produced more wind power than the state’s total energy demand. Normally, nearly a third of the state’s energy comes from renewable sources, according to figures from 2012 to 2013.

South Australia, home to the city of Adelaide, has almost half of the country’s wind capacity; 25 percent of its households have rooftop solar installations, according to the report. The state is aggressively pursuing green energy goals, upping its 2025 renewable energy commitment from 33 percent to 50 percent, having met its previous goal six years ahead of schedule.

This is despite the conservative federal government under Prime Minister Tony Abbott threatening to gut a national renewable energy target, having already defunded several government agencies responsible for the country’s climate change policies. In July, Australia became the world’s first developed nation to repeal a carbon tax.

All of that policy uncertainty is having an impact on the renewable energy sector in Australia. Investment has virtually frozen in a land famous for being bathed in sun. Recent data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows Australia is on track to record its lowest level of financing for big renewable projects since 2002, dropping the country from the 11th largest investor to 31st in Bloomberg’s rankings. In the third quarter of this year, investment was down 78 percent from the same time last year.

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A Place With the Population of West Virginia Just Powered A Work Day Entirely on Clean Energy

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Surprise! Eric Cantor Lands $3.4 Million Job on Wall Street

Mother Jones

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After Rep. Eric Cantor lost his primary to a tea party challenger in June, he could have stayed on as a lame duck, collecting his salary and voting as a full member of Congress through January 2015. Instead, Cantor decided to step down from his job as the GOP’s majority leader and resign his seat early. Cantor claimed that the decision to call it quits was in the interests of his constituents. “I want to make sure that the constituents in the 7th District will have a voice in what will be a very consequential lame-duck session,” Cantor said at the time, explaining that he’d timed his decision so his replacement could be seated as soon as possible.

No one believed it—on August 1, the Huffington Post‘s Arthur Delaney and Eliot Nelson wrote that voters would soon hear about “Eric Cantor’s forthcoming finance job.” A month later, their prediction has proven true: On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cantor will soon start work at Moelis & Co, an investment bank. Cantor—whose experience prior to becoming a professional politician largely consisted of working in the family real estate development business—will earn a hefty salary for his lack of expertise: According to Business Insider, he’s set to make $3.4 million from the investment firm. “Mr. Moelis said he is hiring Mr. Cantor for his “judgment and experience” and ability to open doors—and not just for help navigating regulatory and political waters in Washington,” the Journal reported.

Democrats sell out, too. In 2010, former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh announced his plans to retire in 2010 in a New York Times op-ed that bemoaned the lack of bipartisan friendships in the modern Senate and attacked the influence of money in politics. Yet shortly after he left Congress, Bayh signed up with law firm McGuireWoods and private equity firm Apollo Global Management and began acting as a lobbyist for corporate clients in all but name. Less than a year later, he joined the US Chamber of Commerce as an adviser. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) pulled a similar trick, promising “no lobbying, no lobbying,” before taking a $1-million-plus job as the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood’s main lobbying group.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 417 ex-lawmakers hold lobbyist or lobbyist-like jobs.

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Surprise! Eric Cantor Lands $3.4 Million Job on Wall Street

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Report Shows Renewable Fuels Support 852,000 Jobs and $46 Billion in Wages for America’s Workers

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Report Shows Renewable Fuels Support 852,000 Jobs and $46 Billion in Wages for America’s Workers

Posted 24 April 2014 in

National

WASHINGTON, DC — The Fuels America coalition today released an economic impact study by John Dunham & Associates showing the far-reaching benefits of renewable fuels for America’s workers and the U.S. economy – including supporting more than 850,000 American jobs.

Renewable fuels now represent nearly 10% of America’s fuel supply and have helped reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil to the lowest level in years. The analysis takes into account the entire supply chain for renewable fuels and quantifies the impact to the U.S. economy, including:

Driving $184.5 billion of economic output
Supporting 852,056 jobs and $46.2 billion in wages
Generating $14.5 billion in tax revenue each year

The full analysis is publicly available on the Fuels America website, including localized reports for every state and every congressional district in the country .

The report tells the story of an innovative, advanced renewable fuels and biofuels industry that is producing growing benefits for America’s economy. “The data are in: The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is driving billions of dollars of economic activity across America,” the report concludes. “This is the result of years of investment by the biofuel sector to bring clean, low carbon renewable fuels to market.”

Embraced by both Democrats and Republicans and signed into law by President Bush – but bitterly opposed by the oil industry – the RFS calls for the use of American-grown renewable fuels in our transportation fuel supply. The oil industry is urging the U.S. EPA and/or Congress to repeal or weaken the RFS so that renewable fuels do not further reduce oil industry market share.

Fuels America stands with the thousands of farm families, workers, small business owners, environmental advocates, veterans and military families who submitted comments to the U.S. EPA urging the agency to protect the Renewable Fuel Standard and support the development of clean, homegrown American fuels.

Fuels America News & Stories

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