Renewable fuels advocates aren’t expecting the government to fully restore proposed cuts to the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), but they’re closely watching the reasons used to justify the cuts.

"The number that comes out is not going to be the number in the statute. That’s been made clear to us," Samantha Slater, vice president of government affairs for the Renewable Fuels Association, told members of the Iowa Farm Bureau’s Ag Leaders Institute recently in Washington D.C. "The number itself is not as important as the methodology and justification they use."

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last October...