Biofuels trade association Growth Energy and executives from convenience stores and the fuels industry are calling on the Biden administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to allow E15 gasoline to be sold this summer throughout the nation to provide continued choice in the marketplace.
Consumers don’t understand the point of the summer restrictions on E15, said Carson Berger, an executive at NUVU Fuels in Manatee, Michigan. “Our customers have been purchasing E15 from our facility for five years. They come in and expect that fuel to be there,” he said.
Current EPA regulations restrict E15 sales in states without a Reformulated Gasoline Program, or about two-thirds of the nation during summer months due to concerns the fuel contributes to smog when the temperature rises. E15 is a biofuel made of gasoline blended with 10.5% to 15% ethanol.
To take away E15 and change the fuel offerings during the summer, Berger said, “That causes consumer confusion.”
Last summer, with inflation and the war in the Ukraine pushing up fuel prices, President Joe Biden by executive order asked the EPA for an emergency waiver, thereby allowing the sale of E15 in all states from June 1 to Sept. 15. E15 fuel is a 15% ethanol blend.
To ban the sale of E15 this summer would increase fuel volatility and lead to higher prices at the pump, said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor during a call with the news media March 30. Last year’s waiver reduced the price of fuels by a dime to a buck per gallon in some areas, she said.
More than 200 of Kum & Go’s roughly 400 locations offered E15 to customers last summer, said Brad Petersen, director of retail fuels at Kum & Go, Des Moines, Iowa.”The saving were significant. We saw a lot of customers transition to this E15 because of the price difference,” he said. “We can’t afford outdated summertime restrictions that get in the way of cost savings for our customers.”
To take away E15 this summer would be a problem for consumers who purchase it regularly. “We’ve started to talk about what it would look like if this emergency waiver was not passed. It would be difficult … It would be a challenge,” Petersen said.
- Kum & Go is No. 22 on CSP’s 2023 Top 40 update to the 2022 Top 202 ranking of convenience store chains by store count. Watch for the full 2023 Top 202 in June.
Growth Energy supports thereintroduction of Senate Bill 785: the Consumer and Fuel Retailer Choice Act of 2023, which would allow for year-round sale of E15 blendsnationwide,Skor said. “That is what we need, a permanent federal fix,” Skor said.
The bill has 16 cosponsors, according to GovTrack.us. Skor said the Senate bill and a companion House bill would create a more level fuels marketplace permanently, “where ultimately the consumer gets to choose what they put in their vehicle.”
Berger aid NUVU Fuelshas sold E15 for about five years to provide a higher-level, ethanol-blend fuel. “All of our ethanol or biofuels is Michigan-made, so there’s a sense of pride in keeping those dollars local and supporting local industry, as opposed to importing more and being more reliant on the petroleum supply chain,” he said.
As the number of flex-fuel vehicles on the road has increased, more consumers are choosing E85, which sells at a discount from E10. About 4,330 fuel stations sold E85 fuel in 2022, up 10% from the prior year, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center.
The battle to allow year-round sales of biofuels during the summer goes back to 2005, when the EPA granted an emergency fuel wavier, according to Congressional Research Service.
The benefits of biofuels, and E15 in particular, have been debated for years, with contradictory information from research leading to controversy over the environmental benefits of the corn-based fuel.
When emissions from the production of ethanol are factored in, corn-based ethanol was found to be 24% more carbon-intensive than petroleum-based gasoline, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But a May 2019 General Accounting Office report contradicted this, finding the biofuel’s effect on the environment to be minimal.
The EPA issued a final rule in 2019 allowing E15 to be sold year-round, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Court vacated this rule in July 2021. In January 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review this decision.
Opposition from the major oil companies is thought to have contributed to opposition over E15, but Skor said more fuel companies are willing to support year-round sales of E15, in the face of new competition from other energy sources and opposition from elected officials like California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“It’s nice we’re starting to see on the petroleum side increased support for this,” Skor said.
Both Carson and Petersen said the sooner the EPA grants the waiver, the better prepared they can be for the summer driving season. “We can’t make the change at the station level in one day or two days,” Carson said, because his oil company needs time to react. “Those changes can’t happen overnight.”