By Erin Voegele.

On Oct. 5, a bipartisan group of 38 senators led by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, asking him to ensure the 2018 Renewable Fuel Standard blending requirements promote growth in the U.S. biofuels sector and the U.S. economy.

The letter stresses that when Congress adopted the RFS in 2005, its goal was to drive innovation and investments that would bring biofuels to American consumers. “The biofuel industry supports hundreds of thousands of jobs throughout the country, reduces the environmental impact of our transportation and energy sectors, and cuts our reliance on foreign oil,” said the senators in the letter. “The stability of our policy has led to billions of dollars of investment in the biofuel sector. America’s production capacity has expanded more than threefold since 2005 with fuels such as biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol, recycled-waste, algal, and other advanced biofuels.”