Opinion ID: 4435003
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: NBB’s Standing

Text: Before considering the merits of NBB’s claims, we must satisfy ourselves that NBB has standing to assert them. Respondent-Intervenors, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute, contend that NBB lacks standing because, they say, it has not shown that the 2017 Rule inflicted a cognizable injury on any of its members. NBB has associational standing here for the same reasons we held it did in National Biodiesel Board v. EPA, 843 F.3d 1010, 1015 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (NBB v. EPA), where EPA’s actions “incentivize[d] . . . compet[ition] with [NBB’s members’] domestic production.” Here, too, NBB’s members “compete with” the other industry players EPA’s rule is designed to affect. Id. at 1016. Recall that biomass-based diesel is a nested subset of advanced and total renewable fuels, such that NBB’s members get (1) a market for compelled buyers of the specified volume of biomass-based diesel, for which they are the exclusive suppliers, plus (2) a market for compelled buyers of advanced and other renewable fuels alongside a broad array of competing suppliers. See supra at 6–8, 11. The 2017 Rule preamble explains that biomass-based diesel “compet[es] for research and development dollars with other types of advanced biofuels,” and that, “[b]y establishing [the biomass-based diesel] volume requirement[] at [a] level[] 64 lower than . . . the expected production of [biomass-based diesel],” EPA was “creating the potential for some competition between [biomass-based diesel] and other advanced biofuels to satisfy the advanced biofuel” applicable volume and providing “incentives for the continued development of” those competitors’ fuels. 81 Fed. Reg. at 89,797; see also EPA Coffeyville Br. 24 (“Above 2.1 billion gallons, biomass-based diesel will have to compete with other types of advanced biofuel.”). Such competition will likely “temper to some extent [biomass-based diesel] prices.” Final Statutory Factors Assessment for the 2018 Biomass Based Diesel (BBD) Applicable Volume, EPA-HQ-OAR-2016-0004-3708, at 10 (Dec. 12, 2016) (Supplemental Assessment), Coffeyville J.A. 533. That is a cognizable injury to NBB’s members. See NBB v. EPA, 843 F.3d at 1015–16; see also Delta Constr. Co. v. EPA, 783 F.3d 1291, 1299 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (per curiam). Though NBB failed to identify any of its members— ordinarily a prerequisite for organizations alleging associational standing, see Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 497–98 (2009)—that omission is not fatal here because NBB’s members comprise “the entire biomass-based diesel category of the Renewable Fuel Standard[s]” and represent no other interests. Coffeyville J.A. 134. Consistent with “the real purpose of the [standing] inquiry—that is, for the court to be satisfied that the requisite injury really has occurred or will occur in the future to members of the organization[],” Pub. Citizen v. FTC, 869 F.2d 1541, 1552 (D.C. Cir. 1989), there is no need to identify injured members when “all the members of the organization are affected by the challenged activity,” Summers, 555 U.S. at 499 (citing NAACP v. Ala. ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 459 (1958)). Because EPA’s rule subjects the biomass-based diesel industry to increased competition, with anticipated pricing effects, NBB “meet[s] the 65 constitutional prerequisites of injury, causation, and redressability.” NBB v. EPA, 843 F.3d at 1015.