US Renewable Fuels Association Responds to Biden Administration\'s Treasury Department 45Z Tax Credit Guidance
<div class=\"default-font-wrapper\" style=\"line-height: 1;font-size: 12pt; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\"><div style=\"line-height: 1;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;\">The U.S. Treasury today released a “notice of intent to propose regulations” regarding implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Clean Fuel Production Credit (“45Z”). Today’s notice begins a 90-day comment period that leaves major decisions on the future of the 45Z credit to the incoming Trump administration.<br id=\"isPasted\"><br>“While we are pleased to see Treasury has finally released its long overdue guidance on 45Z, today’s package falls short of expectations and remains incomplete,” said Geoff Cooper, President and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association. “The guidance is a potential step in the right direction, but much work remains to be done before clean fuel producers, farmers, and consumers can fully benefit from the 45Z program.”<br><br>Cooper noted that important information from the emissions rate table remains unavailable in today’s guidance, making it impossible for producers to know whether their fuel is eligible for the credit or not. While that information, along with a new 45Z GREET model, is expected to be released soon, today’s guidance leaves biofuel producers in limbo. Today’s guidance also fails to integrate climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices that can lower the carbon intensity of renewable fuels, and it does not allow producers to determine their own unique carbon intensity values (called a “provisional emissions rate”).<br><br>“Unfortunately, today’s guidance does not provide the certainty or flexibility that ethanol producers were looking for, and many questions remain unanswered,” Cooper said. “We do not believe this guidance alone will spur the investment, innovation, and job creation in the clean fuels sector that Congress and the administration intended. It simply isn’t bankable, investible, or otherwise actionable for the vast majority of biofuel producers.<br><br>“For the 45Z program to truly drive innovation and value creation in the marketplace, the credit must allow for the inclusion of efficient farming practices, recognition of additional feedstocks and ethanol production technologies, flexible supply chain management tools, and the ability for individual producers to secure their own unique carbon intensity values. But most importantly, producers will not act on this or any subsequent guidance unless they have the assurance that the credit will be durable, stable, and reliably available in the future.”</span></div></div>