Sawlog residues and logging leftovers have been locked out of the federal Renewable Fuel Standard’s biomass definition after a 216 to 210 floor vote in the US House of Representatives last week, with the same fight now set to resurface in the US Senate Agriculture Committee. That is according to reporting by Marc Heller, who confirmed Oregon Republican Congressman Cliff Bentz’s amendment to the Farm, Food and National Security Act (H.R. 7567) fell on 30 April before the broader Bill cleared the chamber 224 to 200 the following morning.
The Bentz amendment would have expanded the RFS definition of renewable biomass to include residual material from sawmills and other wood processors, alongside companion proposals to broaden the standard into forest mill residue and to expand thinning around wildfire-threatened groves of giant sequoia trees. “This amendment would allow materials from these sources to be economically used for domestic biofuel production,” Mr Bentz said in floor debate.
Opposition came from inside the forest products supply chain, where the American Forest & Paper Association ran an open campaign against the amendment in the days before the vote. “Renewable fuel incentives should not sacrifice US mill jobs,” AF&PA Vice President of Government Affairs Julie Landry said, with her association arguing forest products manufacturing supports five times the core mill jobs and nine times the total supply chain jobs of stand-alone biomass energy.
The push for a wider RFS pathway is led by the Forest Landowners Association, the National Alliance of Forest Owners and farm group allies, with Forest Landowners Association CEO Scott Jones putting the case in market-failure terms. “The RFS holds the solution to multiple problems,” Mr Jones told E&E News, and his association represents individual landowners and forest businesses across the Southeast and other regions that currently face shrinking pulpwood and residual markets.
NAFO President and CEO David Tenny has separately argued in Agri-Pulse that around 80 per cent of a log’s value comes from dimensional lumber, leaving the remaining 20 per cent reliant on chips, bark and sawdust markets that the Bentz amendment was designed to underwrite. “Without viable markets for lower-value wood and fibre, the economics of modern forestry fall apart,” Mr Tenny said.
It comes as the EPA’s finalised RFS rule for 2026 and 2027, gazetted on 1 April and taking effect on 15 June, signalled that the agency was open to revisiting wildfire-risk, slash, pre-commercial thinnings, and tree residue definitions in a future rulemaking. A coalition of forest industry groups, including NAFO, had already lodged a January 2026 letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin pressing for the same outcome.
With the Bentz amendment defeated 216 to 210, the broader Farm Bill cleared 224 to 200, and AF&PA pledging to oppose any Senate Farm Bill containing the same RFS biomass provision, the Forest Landowners Association’s claim on a 50-million-tonne annual residual stream now sits with the Senate Agriculture Committee, opposed by a 925,000-strong US pulp, paper and forest products workforce.
