Back in 2005, Congress passed the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) that requires biofuel be blended into gasoline in the U.S. By now, we’ve all noticed that the gasoline at local gas stations has “up to 10% ethanol” and according to the RFS, it’s required that that ethanol continue to increase – however, not by percentage, but by gallons.
When the RFS was passed, it was passed with the belief that Americans would use more and more gasoline as the years went by, and therefore, the amount of ethanol could be increased without compromising the ratio. However, Americans are actually using less gas, and that means the original proposal gallon additions could be problematic.
Ethanol is not actually as good for gasoline as once thought – in fact, ethanol’s net emissions can be as much as 70 percent higher than the emissions of traditional gasoline. That means the more ethanol we add to gasoline, the less it will burn cleanly. It also means fewer miles per gallon.
Since the EPA has the power to make some adjustments to the law, it recently decided to try to balance Congress’s goal and the fuel market and put forth a 2017 ethanol requirement that’s “less than the law requires, but more than the market demands.” The original bill calls for 24 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol to be blended into the 2017 national gas supply, but the EPA proposed 18.8 billion instead. While that’s over 5 billion gallons less than the original, it’s nearly 700 million gallons more than what was required for 2016.
Chet Thompson, president of American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, said that he supports the EPA’s actions, but their call for 18.8 billion gallons of ethanol still goes beyond “marketplace realities.”
Now, several groups and companies are calling for the repeal or reformation of Congress’s original RFS bill, calling it a failure. Until the bill is adjusted, the EPA is calling the ethanol shots, and will issue a final rule by the end of this year.
