The U.S. environmental regulator on Thursday defended its handling of the nation’s controversial renewable fuels program at a congressional hearing, the first since its new biofuels targets last month provoked a furor among corn farmers and oil refiners. At the hearing by the Senate subcommittee on regulatory affairs and federal management, U.S. lawmakers criticized the agency for years-long delays to quotas and for last month setting unattainable targets for the amount of corn-based ethanol and other biofuels that must be used in the nation’s motor fuel supply over the next two years. They also questioned the future of the decade-old Renewable Fuels Standards (RFS), which critics say has inflated prices of food and fuel at the pump. The panel will likely increase congressional attention to the pitfalls of the decade-old biofuels policy as it faces a fresh wave of criticism from policymakers, the oil industry and environmentalists. But […]