At first glance, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposal to facilitate increased sales of E15, an 85/15 blend of gasoline and ethanol blends, by bringing it to the same regulatory level as ‘summer than E10 available in eight Midwest/Great Plains states. it might look like a boon to corn farmers and ethanol producers. But as we discuss in today’s RBN blog, there are a number of economic, practical and even psychological barriers to expanding public access and use of E15 that go well beyond the regulatory issue specific that addresses the EPA proposal. As a result, as we see it, the EPA plan is unlikely to increase demand for E15 in any significant way, at least for now.
In response to requests from the governors of eight Corn Belt states (Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin (see Figure 1)), the EPA, earlier this month, he proposed a plan that eliminates a regulatory advantage that E10 has vs. E15 during the summer months. More specifically, the EPA said it would hold a public hearing early this spring on the agency’s proposal to eliminate (next year, in the eight states in question) a decades-old exemption from the Clean Air Act which allows E10 to be sold during the summer months. have a Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) one pound per square inch (1 psi) higher than would be allowed for gasoline, essentially putting E10 and E15 on equal footing. (More on that in a moment.) The move was praised by governors and corn-ethanol advocates, but they criticized the EPA’s plan to delay implementation of the rule until 2024 to give more time for refiners, blenders and service stations to make the switch. — They wanted to remove the E10 RVP exemption from June 1 this year.
