ACE’s grassroots advocacy is focused on expanding ethanol use. Let’s take inventory of these advocacy efforts.
E15 year-round
During last year’s record high pump prices, E15 saved drivers 15 cents per gallon on average compared to regular. Attractive blending economics remain today, and we are grateful EPA issued temporary waivers this summer to capitalize on E15’s ability to reduce prices.
Nevertheless, we cannot continue to rely on emergency steps to secure market access for E15. That’s why Midwest governors employed the Clean Air Act to document how E15 would cut emissions in their states during summer months, and way back in 2022, petitioned EPA to remove the outdated RVP roadblock to E15 year-round.
The Clean Air Act requires a response by EPA within 90 days, but the Agency didn’t get around to proposing to remove the RVP roadblock until this spring. This foot-dragging has led the Attorneys General for two of the states – Iowa and Nebraska – to file a lawsuit compelling the Agency to act.
Ultimately, the only bulletproof approach to permanent and nationwide E15 availability is through Congress. Bipartisan bills are making progress in the Senate and House, and ACE is working to identify ways to get a bill over the finish line this year.
Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS)
If EPA follows the law, the RFS can be a powerful tool for increasing ethanol demand. We have entered a new phase for the RFS, where EPA has even more discretion to set future blending levels. Earlier this year, the Agency used this new authority to set volumes for three years at a time – 2023 through 2025 – an improvement to the annual rulemakings of the past.
But having worked in the U.S. Senate as the RFS was being developed, I argue EPA continues to misunderstand the profound importance of the program. The RFS was enacted because Congress knew refiners would not voluntarily supply the market with low-cost, low-carbon renewable fuels to displace the petroleum products they make. Congress intended for the RFS to be transformational, to disrupt the status-quo grip refiners had on the marketplace and provide consumer access to cleaner and lower cost fuels.
EPA had an opportunity to use this new phase of the program to unleash the RFS to be transformational. The Agency’s proposal for conventional biofuel was a great start, but refiners argued the market was not ready for more ethanol. EPA’s final rule reduced the volume obligations for 2024 and 2025, and set underwhelming totals for biomass-based biodiesel, steps which not only slow progress toward the Administration’s climate goals, but also enable excess biodiesel production to spill into the D6 pool of the RFS, and potentially displace physical blending of E15 and E85.
We must remain a vigilant watchdog over EPA implementation of the RFS, but we must do much more, beyond the RFS, to increase ethanol demand well into the future.
Historically, we have increased demand by leveraging the public policy benefits ethanol offers, attributes such as being a domestically produced, renewable, high-octane, and low-cost fuel, or, how ethanol helps boost farm income and spurs the rural economy, just to name a few. These attributes will always be important, but we need to lean into ethanol’s clean and low-carbon benefits as well, to prove farmers and ethanol producers are part of the climate solution.
Ethanol Is Part of the Solution to Curb Carbon Pollution
Many ACE members have taken significant strides to reduce energy use, produce cellulosic gallons or invest in technologies to capture and permanently sequester CO2. The common thread for this investment activity is appreciation for the fact that everything counts, from how the bushels of corn are produced, to the BTUs powering your facility, counting carbon is the name of the game.
ACE is here to help farmers and ethanol producers maximize their investments in the carbon space.
We are helping farmers adopt practices such as conservation tillage, 4R nutrient management and cover crops to reduce the carbon intensity of their corn. We have created calculators on ethanol.org to do the math on what technology investments and climate-smart farming practices are worth. We’re collaborating with scientists to properly monitor and measure the GHG benefits resulting from climate-smart ag practices, so the data is irrefutable and sufficiently robust to convince the lifecycle modelers and market regulators that farmers and ethanol plants need to receive valuable carbon credits. We plan on building a non-proprietary tool for farmers and ethanol producers to use to quantify and verify how many carbon credits certain farming practices, on certain soil types, in certain counties should receive.
The value of this activity? Market and policy support for the low-carbon benefits you deliver each and every day and premiums paid for cleaner gallons of ethanol sold in the future.
