By David Leiter, Sarah Litke, Jean Cornell, Bryan Stockton, Jordan Collins and  Neal Martin

With Congress out for the August recess, this week’s major energy-related announcements came from the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.

On Wednesday, the Energy Department approved a third liquefied natural gas export terminal.  Required to review all facilities designed to export to non-free trade agreement countries by the Natural Gas Act, the agency found the Louisianan Lake Charles Exports LLC facility aligns itself with the public interest.  In reviewing the economic, energy, and environmental impacts of the facility, the agency received approximately 200,000 public comments.

The Environmental Protection Agency on August 6 released the 2013 Renewable Fuel Standard volume requirements.  16.55 billion gallons of biofuels must be blended, and the compliance deadline was extended to June 30, 2014.  The cellulosic requirement, originally proposed at 14 million gallons, was finalized to be 6 million gallons.  The drop in the requirement was linked to an August 8 announcement that cellulosic producer KiOR fell short of projected production by 75 percent.

For more on the latest energy and clean technology regulatory and legislative developments please see ML Strategies’ most recent Energy and Environmental Update.