The Environmental Protection Agency plans to begin work in February to allow year-round sale of E15 and complete the regulation in May, just ahead of the usual June 1 cutoff of summer sales. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, from the top corn and ethanol state, said on Tuesday that the agency “ought to speed it up” to be sure the fuel will be available for the summer driving season.
“Otherwise, it is going to look like the president wasn’t serious” in declaring the administration would end the partial-year ban, said Grassley during a teleconference. “Either do it or get off the pot is what I would say.” Grassley is a leading proponent in Congress for biofuels. Grassley and fellow Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week saying action on E15 “will deliver a timely infusion of optimism to farmers” caught in the crossfire of the trade war.
When Trump signed a “decision memo” for year-round sales on Oct. 9, hours before a campaign rally in Iowa, ethanol industry leaders said it would be a squeeze for the government to write an E15 regulation and implement it in time for retailers to take advantage of it next summer. In many cases, retailers will need new pumps to dispense the ethanol-gasoline blend. At the moment, E15 is sold at 1,400 of 122,000 filling stations nationwide. Some analysts doubt E15 will have much of an impact on ethanol sales next summer.
Although expanded E15 sales are months from reality and there are threats of lawsuits to block EPA approval, farm and ethanol groups celebrated E15 as a certainty. Two farmers in northwestern Indiana cut the message, “Thanks Mr Trump for E15,” into a field of corn awaiting harvest. They used GPS guidance on a combine to shape the letters and minimize harvest losses, said the Lafayette Journal and Courier.
Along with clearing E15 for summer sales, the EPA said it also was “proposing regulatory changes to modify certain elements of the renewable identification number (RIN) compliance system under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program, in order to improve RIN market functioning.” The oil industry has complained about high costs for RINs, which they can buy to comply with the RFS if they do not blend enough ethanol into gasoline.