December finally got here! This year – which at times seemed like it would never end – will be coming to an end in a few days. It would be nice to think the end of the year would also mark the end of all the difficulties and weirdness we’ve encountered in 2020. If “2020 hindsight” only means we are done with 2020 and get to watch it get smaller in our rearview mirrors, that would be comforting.…

Most fuel marketers aren’t currently waiting to find out if they’re going to get part of the $100 million in Higher Blends Infrastructure Incentive Program (HBIIP) matching grant money that will begin being awarded any day now by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). If you are one of the 121 applicants waiting to hear from USDA, good luck! We hope you get good news soon, and thanks for making…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Higher Blends Infrastructure Incentive Program (HBIIP) closed its application window August 13. In the months following USDA’s announcement of the program in May, ACE launched a series of short fuel-marketer focused video tutorials with USDA program staff walking through the application process and simplifying it so retailers could fill out the application…

In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a program to help pick up the tab for biofuel infrastructure called the Higher Blends Infrastructure Incentive Program (HBIIP). The program makes $100 million dollars available to fuel retailers and pays up to 50 percent of the cost of buying and installing new equipment or upgrading existing equipment to sell E15 and flex fuels like E85.…

Last fall, the Nielsen organization predicted “convenience stores will grow faster than all other offline channels over the next five years, reflecting the hyper focus consumers are putting on expediency.” That was three months before any of us heard rumblings of the mysterious coronavirus we now know too well, and the resulting shut down of much of the world’s economy.

Convenience stores…

On May 5, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released details on the Higher Blends Infrastructure Incentive Program (HBIIP) they announced earlier this year. The program will award up to $100 million in grants for biofuels infrastructure, with $86 million targeted toward improving availability of fuels containing higher percentages of ethanol like E15 and E85. Like the Biofuels Infrastructure Partnership…

Late last month, stories began to circulate that wet and cold weather had caused damage to significant portions of the potato crop in Canada and the U.S., leading to a potentially horrifying result: This North American potato crop failure could lead to reduced availability and increased prices for… French fries! Families gathered around their tables for Thanksgiving wondered if they were enjoying…

The past 18 months have been brutal to the ethanol industry. The Environmental Protection Agency gutted the Renewable Fuel Standard by issuing retroactive Small Refinery Exemptions (SREs), reducing refiners' renewable fuel requirements by 4 billion gallons and forcing ethanol producers to sell gallons at “clearance sale” prices. Had it not been for record-setting exports and forward-looking retailers…

Based on input from retailers who stopped to see us at trade shows, emails and phone calls we received from marketers, and conversations we had with station owners we work with, ACE recently updated the flexfuelforward.com website to include more marketer “testimonials”…

During the week and a half following President Trump’s Council Bluffs, Iowa, announcement saying EPA had updated Reid vapor pressure (RVP) regulations to allow E15 (15 percent ethanol and 85 percent gasoline) to be sold under the same rules as the 10 percent ethanol blend used in over 90 percent of cars on the road today, I heard from a handful of pump and equipment suppliers, each of whom had heard…