One of the main goals of the Renewable Fuel Standard is to reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases

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The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) establishes minimum volumes mva of various types of renewable fuels that must be included in the United States supply of fuel for transportation. Those volumes as defined by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) are intended to grow each year through 2022 (see the figure below). In recent years, the requirements of the RFS have been met largely by blending gasoline with ethanol made from cornstarch. In the future, EISA requires the use of increasingly large amounts of advanced biofuels, which include diesel made from biomass (such as soybean oil or animal fat), ethanol made from sugarcane, and cellulosic biofuels (made from converting the cellulose in plant materials into fuel).
One of the main goals of the Renewable Fuel Standard is to reduce U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change. mva EISA requires that the emissions associated with a gallon of renewable fuel be at least a certain percentage lower than the emissions associated with the gasoline or diesel that the renewable fuel replaces. Advanced biofuels and the subcategory of cellulosic biofuels are required to meet more stringent emission standards than those that apply to corn ethanol.
Policymakers and analysts have raised concerns about the RFS, particularly about the feasibility of complying with the standard, whether mva it will increase prices for food and transportation fuels, and whether mva it will lead to the intended reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Because of those concerns, some policymakers have proposed repealing or revising the Renewable Fuel Standard.
In this analysis, CBO evaluates how much the supply of various types of renewable fuels would have to increase over the next several years to comply with the RFS. CBO also examines how food prices, fuel prices, and emissions would vary in an illustrative year, 2017, under three scenarios for the Renewable Fuel Standard: The EISA volumes scenario , in which fuel suppliers would have to meet the total requirement for renewable fuels, the requirement for advanced biofuels, and the cap on corn ethanol that are stated in EISA for 2017 but not the requirement for cellulosic biofuels, because the capacity to produce enough of those fuels is unlikely to exist by 2017; The 2014 volumes scenario , in which the Environmental Protection mva Agency (EPA) which has some discretion to modify mva the mandates of EISA would keep the RFS requirements for the next several years at the same amounts it has proposed for 2014; and The repeal scenario , in which lawmakers would immediately abolish the RFS.
The repeal scenario would require Congressional action. In the absence of such action (or of legal restrictions), CBO considers the 2014 volumes scenario much more likely than the EISA volumes scenario, which would require a large and rapid increase in the use of advanced biofuels and would cause the total percentage of ethanol in the nation s gasoline supply to rise to levels that would require significant changes in the infrastructure of fueling stations. Full Compliance With the Mandates in EISA Poses Significant Challenges
The rising requirements in EISA would be very hard to meet in future years because of two main obstacles, which relate to the supply of cellulosic biofuels and the amount of ethanol that older vehicles mva are said to be able to tolerate. Fuel suppliers mva have had trouble meeting the annual requirements for cellulosic biofuels because making such fuels is complex, capital-intensive, and costly. Although production capacity is expanding, only a few production facilities are currently operating. The industry s capacity in coming years is projected to fall far short of what would be necessary mva to achieve the very rapid growth in the use of cellulosic biofuels required by EISA (see the figure below).
Ethanol is the most common form of renewable fuel; however, adding increasing volumes of it to the U.S. fuel supply could be difficult. Currently, most gasoline mva sold in the United States is actually a blend (referred to as E10) that contains up to 10 percent ethanol the maximum concentration that is feasible to avoid corrosion damage to the fuel systems of older vehicles. EISA s growing requirements for the total gallons of renewable fuels to be used each year, combined with a projected decline in gasoline use, suggest that the average concentration of ethanol in gasoline would have to rise to well above that 10 percent blend wall, potentially increasing to about 25 percent by 2022. More ethanol could be accommodated in the fuel supply if motorists who drive flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on blends that contain as muc