The US Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels and Feedstocks Office has released a pre-publication draft notice setting out an Emissions Value Request process for the Section 45Z Clean Fuel Production Tax Credit, Hydrocarbon Processing Biofuels reported. The process addresses transportation fuels whose emissions rates cannot be obtained from the applicable rate table.
Producers seeking the credit must establish their fuel’s life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions rate using the Section 45Z table. Where the fuel type, primary feedstock or production pathway is absent from that table, they must instead petition the US Treasury Secretary for a provisional emissions rate. The request process therefore provides a route for producers whose fuels fall outside the table’s existing coverage.
Under the procedure described in the report, producers can request an emissions value from the Department of Energy and use it to petition Treasury for a provisional rate. The DOE request and the Treasury petition are distinct parts of that route; the announcement concerns the process for obtaining the emissions value needed to pursue the provisional rate.
Applicants must follow the Emissions Value Request Application Instructions when submitting the required materials. They may also provide supplementary information to support the life-cycle analysis of the transportation fuel production pathway described in their request form and FEED study. The supplied report does not enumerate the mandatory submission documents.
According to Hydrocarbon Processing Biofuels, the Working Families Tax Cut modified and extended the credit, which provides a production incentive involving certain feedstocks produced in the United States, Mexico or Canada. Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson presented the new process as a way to broaden American fuel producers’ access to tax incentives and support farmers and rural economies.