Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it will open quarterly application windows for the remaining $450 million provided in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for the Department’s Higher Blends Infrastructure Incentive Program (HBIIP) starting July 1, 2023. The program provides grants to pay up to 75 percent of the cost of equipment for station owners who add or upgrade equipment and sell higher ethanol blends like E15 and E85. USDA also announced the first recipients of the IRA funding made available in December 2022. American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) Chief Marketing Officer Ron Lamberty has helped retailers apply for and receive HBIIP grants since the program’s inception and has provided feedback to USDA on challenges experienced by marketers and suggestions to increase participation following each round of awards and for these funds designated for biofuel infrastructure under the IRA. Lamberty issued the following statement following USDA’s announcement:
“ACE looks forward to seeing more details of the program when they are released. We thank USDA for allowing us to provide feedback and recommend changes we hope will make funds more accessible to single-store and small chain retailers. Those retailers are key to widespread availability of E15 and E85 and ACE continues to fight for them as the program evolves at USDA. Even something as simple as the multiple application periods announced today will help marketers who don’t have staff or time to gather information and fill out complicated grant applications. In past rounds, if they weren’t sure they could complete the application by the due date, they couldn’t risk the time. Now they’ll know when another application opens and can plan accordingly.
“Hopefully small retailers will also qualify for the higher 75 percent cost share. For the last few years, ACE has concentrated our HBIIP informational efforts on increasing awareness of HBIIP funds, de-mystifying the application process, and letting retailers know help is available. At trade shows earlier this year, however, retailers who never quite got around to applying for past HBIIP grants told us IRA funds covering 75 percent of their equipment cost changes would take applying for the program from possibility to probability.
“We also appreciate USDA HBIIP Program Manager Jeff Carpenter’s efforts to continue making the program more accessible to retailers, by reaching out to ACE and others and allowing us to provide observations and input we received from our industry partners in previous rounds of the program.”
ACE will continue to make marketers aware of HBIIP and other programs through advertising in c-store industry publications, personal outreach at trade shows and workshops, and by sharing experiences of successful higher-blend marketers and providing tools like our Flex Check E15 compatibility tool on the flexfuelforward.com marketer-to-marketer website.