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 The Environmental Protection Agency last week opened public commenting on its recently introduced rule permitting fuel blends above 15 percent with the goal of introducing the rule into law by next December.
As outlined when the agency rolled out the Renewables Enhancement and Growth Support Rule early last month, the EPA proposes to reclassify fuels with 16 to 50 percent ethanol from “gasoline” to “ethanol flex-fuels,” the same category that E85 currently falls in. Such a reclassification would theoretically add more ethanol to the nation’s fuel supply by promoting more widespread adoption of flex-fuel vehicles and of ethanol blender pumps.
The proposal also marks a shift in the EPA’s strategy for implementing the Renewable Fuel Standard. Until last month, the agency focused its efforts to introduce ethanol into the fuel supply on pushing increasingly higher volumes of E10 and E15 – up to 18.11 billion gallons in 2016. However, that tactic has met with resistance from ethanol opponents and from the inability of the nation’s fuel supply to absorb that much ethanol, and that resistance has in turn kept the EPA from meeting the ethanol-blending goals set out in the RFS in 2007.
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Re: EPA Invites Public Comment on Rule That Would Permit Additional Ethanol Blends Above E15
