Representatives of the U.S. ethanol industry urged the U.S. EPA to take action to reinstate the ability to sell E15 year-round ahead of the 2023 summer driving season during a March 21 hearing held as part of the agency’s rulemaking to enable year-round E15 sales in eight Midwest states.

A group of Midwest governors in April 2022 filed petitions requesting that the EPA remove the 1-psi Reid vapor pressure (RVP) waiver for summer gasoline-ethanol blended fuels, which would effectively allow E15 to be sold year-round within their states.

Under statute, the EPA was required to respond to the request with 90-days. The agency, however, failed to respond the petitions for nearly a year. On March 1, 2023, the EPA  released a proposed rule to allow year-round E15 sales in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin starting in 2024 rather than in 2023. The agency attributed the one-year delay to multiple petitions filed by stakeholders.

E15 has been available for use in many non-flex fuel vehicles for more than a decade. The U.S. EPA first granted a partial waiver allowing E15 to be used in model year (MY) 2007 and newer light-duty vehicles in 2010. The agency expanded that waiver to include MY 2001 and newer vehicles the following year. The fuel blend, however, could not be sold in most markets during the summer driving season, from June 1 through Sept. 15. A June 2019 rulemaking changed that, extending the 1-psi RVP waiver to E15 and allowing the fuel to be sold during the summer driving season. The EPA’s rule was challenged by oil groups and in June 2021 the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the portion of the June 2019 related to E15, overturning the ability of most fuel retailers to sell E15 during the summer driving season.  

E15, however, continued to be available during the summer 2022 driving season due to an emergency waiver implemented by the Biden administration. That emergency waiver, announced in April 2022, was issued as part of the administration’s effort to reduce high fuel prices caused, in part, by market impacts associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

That emergency waiver has since expired. During the March 21 hearing, representatives of the ethanol industry urged the EPA to take action to allow E15 sales to continue during the upcoming summer driving season via either a change to the proposed rule or the implementation of a new emergency waiver.

 “If there truly is a problem with implementing the governors' petition this summer, it is a problem of the Administration’s own making,” said Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association. “EPA’s seven-month delay in taking any action at all on the petition has put the marketplace in a real jam—and it should be EPA’s responsibility to get us out of that jam. If the Agency truly believes it cannot implement this petition in time for the summer of 2023, then it should consider using other regulatory authorities to ensure consumers have uninterrupted access to lower-cost, lower-carbon E15. Unless the Agency acts quickly, Midwest drivers will soon lose the ability to choose a fuel that saved them 20-30 cents per gallon on average last summer at a time of record gasoline prices.”

“Retailers who have offered E15 and consumers who have purchased E15 in 2020, 2021, 2022, and who will be able to use it in 2024, will now have to quit selling and using E15 for three and a half months because of EPA foot-dragging,” said Ron Lamberty, chief marketing officer at the American Coalition for Ethanol. “Retailers will have increased costs from having to clean out and switch fuels in their tanks twice, those with blender pumps will incur service charges to adjust products blended twice, and pump decals will have to be changed twice.”

Lamberty adds, “More importantly, the retailers and consumers using E15 do so because it costs 5 to 15 cents less than E10 and 40 to 75 cents less than non-ethanol gasolines. Now they’ll have to spend more for fuel during the busiest time of the year because EPA didn’t get its work done on time.”

“It is vital that EPA finalize this proposal to be effective next summer, and, in the meantime, issue an emergency RVP waiver for 2023, so that E15 will remain available year-round as it has since the summer of 2019,” said Chris Bliley, senior vice president of regulatory affairs at Growth Energy. “The benefits are clear: if adopted nationally, E15 would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 17 million tons, the equivalent of taking nearly 4 million cars off the road and would save consumers more than $20B in fuel costs while creating nearly 190,000 new jobs.” 

A 45-day public comment period on the proposed rule is open through April 20. Additional information is available on the Federal Register website.