The Weekender - Special Edition, Part One

November 17

Bucking the Trend

Desperate times call for desperate measures and today, it is volatile times call for a little biofuels and policy 101.

The United States has two somewhat unprecedented things happening at once in the weeks ahead:

#1 | The largest biofuels policy change since the inception of the Renewable Fuel Standard happens a mere six weeks from now (45Z).

There will be clear winners and losers and agriculture is caught right in the middle.

#2 | Donald Trump’s second term begins three weeks after #1.

Let’s just call it a few scoops of biofuel policy uncertainty ice cream topped off with a dollop of poor China relations, a sprinkling of tariff potential, complete with a California Air Resources Board’s LCFS amendment cherry on top - all to be shared with our new friends in Trump’s EPA, Department of Energy & Department of Agriculture.

The good news is this Sunday’s sundae is without nuts. We managed to rid ourself of a few of them on November 6.

For these reasons, I am going with a slightly different format that usual this weekend. This is the first in what will be two special updates this week.

If you are a free subscriber - the lesson stops here, because you get what you pay for, after all.

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The Beginning

Here’s a quick refresher about how we got to this point:

Hasta la vista, Emissions

Rewind to 2007… California’s then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger commissioned the state’s EPA to create the world’s first low carbon fuel standard, legislating a reduction in the carbon intensity of transportation fuels sold in or supplied to California.