Agricultural Biorefinery Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2025

Summary

Expands and revises the USDA biorefinery assistance statute to explicitly support advanced biofuels (including ultra‑low‑carbon and zero‑carbon bioethanol), broaden covered biobased products and renewable chemicals, add a new competitive grant program for pilot and demonstration‑scale biorefineries, and update loan‑guarantee and application procedures. It requires prioritized scoring, third‑party feasibility studies (with a waiver for proven/commercial technologies), cost‑sharing rules, and conditions program actions on available funding.

• Explicitly adds advanced biofuels (including ultra‑low and zero‑carbon bioethanol) to the USDA biorefinery assistance program purpose.
• Removes the phrase "technologically new" and adds "renewable chemicals, and biobased products" to the statute’s covered outputs, broadening eligibility.
• Creates a new competitive grant program for pilot and demonstration‑scale biorefineries in addition to existing loan guarantees.
• Requires priority scoring and a Secretary‑set minimum score to approve grant applications; establishes cost‑sharing rules.
• Generally requires independent third‑party feasibility studies for grant projects but allows the Secretary to waive that requirement for proven or commercially available technologies.
• Conditions grants and loan guarantees on the availability of appropriations or other funding and mandates year‑round availability of guarantees.
• Makes procedural changes to selection/approval language for guarantees and reorganizes subsections of the statute to integrate the new grant authority.
• Leaves specific funding levels, detailed scoring weights, and full grant language unspecified in the provided amendment text—implementation details will come from USDA guidance or subsequent appropriations.