The Renewable Fuel Standard requires certain refiners and importers of gasoline or diesel to show that renewable fuel was blended into transportation fuel in the United States, or that they bought the credits that stand in for that blending. The program is administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The current biomass-based diesel numbers below are from EPA’s final rule for 2026 and 2027, published in the Federal Register on April 1, 2026, at 91 FR 16388. EPA set the effective date of that rule at June 15, 2026, with some instructions taking effect on a different schedule. The citation for the figures in this section, unless another link is given, is that rule: Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) Program: Standards for 2026 and 2027, Partial Waiver of the 2025 Cellulosic Biofuel Volume Requirement, and Other Changes.
RINs and D-codes
A renewable identification number, or RIN, is the credit EPA attaches to a gallon of qualifying renewable fuel. Obligated parties retire RINs to show compliance. EPA’s overview of the credit is on its RIN page, and the format of the number is in 40 CFR 80.1425.
In market shorthand, D3 is cellulosic biofuel, D4 is biomass-based diesel, D5 is advanced biofuel, and D6 is renewable fuel. Those labels refer to the D-code inside the RIN. This page does not copy a code table. The regulatory section and EPA’s RIN page are the places to read the categories.
A renewable volume obligation, or RVO, is the volume an obligated party must cover. A small-refinery exemption, or SRE, is a waiver of that obligation for a qualifying small refinery. Both show up in the volumes EPA sets, because gallons that are exempted do not have to be met unless EPA reallocates them into a later standard.
Biomass-based diesel for 2026 and 2027
EPA set the biomass-based diesel applicable volume at 9.07 billion RINs for 2026 and 9.20 billion RINs for 2027. The preamble says those RIN volumes guarantee at least 5.33 billion gallons in 2026 and 5.75 billion gallons in 2027. The footnote that produces the gallon figures divides the RIN volume by 1.7 for 2026, which was the equivalence value then in effect for renewable diesel, and by 1.6 for 2027. This page does not split those RIN totals into a base standard and a separate SRE add-on. That split was not taken from the Federal Register text used here.
The biomass-based diesel standard is now written in RINs, which EPA also calls gallon-RINs, rather than in physical gallons. The old 1.6 biomass-based diesel conversion factor is removed. Historically that conversion factor was 1.5, and then 1.6 for 2023 through 2025.
Equivalence values
An equivalence value is how many RINs a gallon generates. EPA’s example in the preamble is an equivalence value of 1.5, which means 1.5 RINs per gallon. Biodiesel is discussed at 1.5. Renewable diesel’s equivalence value is reduced from 1.7 to 1.5 effective January 1, 2027, not in the middle of 2026. Renewable jet moves to 1.5 and renewable naphtha to 1.4 on the same day. A producer may apply under 40 CFR 80.1415 for an equivalence value of 1.6 on renewable diesel. Before this change, EPA says, renewable jet was mostly a facility-specific 1.6 and renewable naphtha was mostly 1.5.
The 2025 cellulosic waiver
EPA waived the 2025 cellulosic biofuel volume from 1.38 billion RINs to 1.21 billion RINs, a shortfall of 0.17 billion RINs. Cellulosic waiver credits are available for 2025.
Small-refinery exemptions
EPA projected that exempted renewable volume obligations for 2023 through 2025 would total 2.89 billion RINs. It reallocated about 70 percent of that, about 2 billion RINs, into the 2026 and 2027 standards so those standards would still force the market to blend. Carryover RINs after 2024 compliance were projected at 3.60 billion. The decisions behind the projection are the August 22, 2025 actions on 175 petitions and the November 7, 2025 actions on 16 more.
A later proposal, published October 16, 2026, would add another 770 million RINs. EPA says that figure is 100 percent of the 2025 exempted volume beyond the 990 million RINs already projected in the Set 2 rule. The agency asks whether to split the 770 million equally across 2026 and 2027 or to place all of it in 2027. Comments are due December 4, 2026. A virtual hearing is set for November 4, 2026. EPA says it may extend the 2026 compliance deadline of March 31, 2027. The docket is EPA-HQ-OAR-2024-0505, RIN 2060-AX09. Source: Federal Register, October 16, 2026, document 2026-21155.
What came out
The same 2026–27 rule removes eRINs, the renewable-electricity credit that had been part of the program’s design. The program’s home at EPA is the Renewable Fuel Standard.