As US President Donald Trump pandered to farm states about ethanol in gasoline, lawmakers began considering other changes to vehicles and fuel chemistry that might better serve US interests.
Trump on Apr. 12 called for a volatility waiver allowing an increase in the blending limit for ethanol in gasoline to 15 vol % (E15) year-round, saying the move “makes a lot of farmers very happy.” Displaying an impressive lack of appreciation for ethanol’s air-quality drawbacks, the president said disallowing the E15 vapor pressure waiver during summer months “was always unnecessary and ridiculous.” Trump seemed concerned less about ozone smog than about effects on political constituencies. “We have to help the refineries,” he added without elaboration.
Central problem
The president thus demonstrated the central problem of America’s misadventure with the Renewable Fuel Standard: the mandated sale of officially favored energy forms. And he misread politics. The RFS now draws parochial support from renewable-fuel businesses, growers of corn and other feedstocks for conventional ethanol, and farm-state politicians. Elsewhere, the program is a recognized problem. It hardly helps the environment, if it does so at all. It promotes a fuel extender in a market that has swung from shortage to surplus since its implementation. And it raises costs generally of food and fuel to enlarge markets for regionally specialized interests.
Expansion of E15 sales is the ethanol lobby’s insufficient and self-serving response to the blend wall. That’s the level at which requirements for ethanol exceed the fuel market’s need for new quantities at prevailing blending limits. Beyond that point, reached about 2013, prices rise for the credits refiners must buy to cover deficits against ethanol-sales requirements. Especially for refiners without blending operations, those costs have become heavy burdens.
The solution is not to enlarge a flawed program by expanding allowable sales of E15. In fact, doing so would further bedevil the RFS regime with the potential for misfuelling and engine damage, reduction in vehicle mileage, and increased evaporative emissions of ozone precursors. And it probably wouldn’t relieve the blend-wall squeeze on refiners. Outside farm states, gasoline with extra ethanol sells poorly.
The solution is to fix the program. And fixing the program requires ending the mandate.
Lawmakers began mapping a reasonable escape from the ethanol mistake in an Apr. 13 hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on the Environment. Members heard testimony on a proposed replacement for the RFS when the program moves under discretion of the Environmental Protection Agency in 2022.
The proposal would address vehicle emissions of air pollutants and fuel efficiency by encouraging production of lightweight, high-compression engines requiring high-octane gasoline. It would create an antiknock standard, prevalent in Europe, of 95 research octane number (RON). The US now assesses gasoline antiknock performance as the average of RON and motor octane number, the highest of which is 93.
High-compression vehicle engines burning RON 95 gasoline would help the US meet targets for emissions of traditional air pollutants and for vehicle fuel mileage, thereby lowering per-mile emissions of carbon dioxide. The initiative could—and should—be implemented without a mandate for ethanol or anything else. It could—and should—focus on performance, not fuel specifications.
Needing to compete
The ethanol lobby already is calling for continuation of the biofuel mandate—from which it benefits volumetrically more than other segments of the biofuel industry. Its position is indefensible. Elevation of the requirement for gasoline octane would, in fact, solidify ethanol’s foothold in the fuel market. Ethanol is an octane booster. Ending the mandate would help refiners and other fuel suppliers balance that value against ethanol’s environmental disadvantages, especially those related to volatility. The increased flexibility would not only lower cost but also improve environmental performance because the optimum octane-volatility balance varies regionally.
Ethanol, however, would have to compete for a change. So ethanol advocates insist that any RON 95 program keep their mandate. While that would make farmers happy, energy policy needs higher purpose.
