Worries over renewable fuel standard lead to EPA meeting, including Iowa Senators

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will meet with farm state lawmakers over their concerns about the future of the Renewable Fuel Standard, officials said Tuesday.

President Donald Trump asked Pruitt to schedule a meeting after speaking Friday with Sen. Chuck Grassley, according to the Iowa Republican's office.

Advocates for the renewable fuels industry, as well as Grassley and other legislators, have been upset since the EPA floated the idea last week that it might lower required levels of advanced biofuels in the nation's fuel supply for 2018 - and that it could count exports of traditional ethanol toward meeting the mandate.

Officials have complained the changes would do 'severe harm.” And Tuesday, a range of biofuel advocates wrote the president to lodge more. Among other complaints, they said the export proposal and the possibility of making biofuel imports ineligible for the fuel standard 'would serve no purpose other than to paralyze growth in U.S. biofuel markets ...”

Trump pledged during the 2016 election campaign that he would support renewable fuels. But the man he appointed to lead the EPA - Pruitt - is a former attorney general in Oklahoma who has been a critic of the rules in the past.

Pruitt is scheduled to meet Oct. 17 with Grassley, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Nebraska, Grassley's office said.

Earlier this year, before Pruitt was confirmed to the post by the Senate, Grassley and Ernst said they had been reassured after meeting with him that he would follow the law. Over the weekend, Ernst said in Davenport that while she still believes Pruitt is the right person for the job, she would hold him accountable.

'We will hold his feet to the fire, just as we did with the former EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy,” she said.

The EPA said last week that nothing had been finalized for the fuel standard and it still was seeking input from stakeholders.