For First Time, E.P.A. Proposes Reducing Ethanol Requirement for Gas Mix
This is VERY good news, however, it does not go far enough. They had been recommending increasing the requirement from 10% to 15%. The ethanol requirement for gasoline should be eliminated altogether, but this is a move in the right direction.
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON —
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed
reducing the amount of ethanol that is required to be mixed with the
gasoline supply, the first time it has taken steps to slow down the drive to
replace fossil fuels with renewable forms of energy.
The move was expected, but it drew bitter complaints
from advocates of ethanol, including some environmentalists, who see the
corn-based fuel blend as a weapon to fight climate change. It was also
unwelcome news to farmers, who noted that the decision came at a time when a
record corn crop is expected, and the price of a bushel has fallen almost to
the cost of production.
“We’re all just sort of scratching our heads here today
and wondering why this administration is telling us to burn less of a
clean-burning American fuel,” said Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association.
Farmers, ethanol producers and high-tech companies
trying to make renewable fuels from wastes have all invested heavily in the
ethanol industry, with an expectation of a heavy demand, advocates said.
But the E.P.A. said that a big part of the problem was
that automobile fuel systems and service stations were not set up to absorb
more than about 10 percent ethanol. Most cars on the road, according to the
automakers, and most fuel pumps, according to service station groups, are
limited to the current mixture, called E10, and there has been little demand by
consumers for more.
Charles Drevna, president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers,
said that the ethanol interests were relying on “a continual government program
that is an anachronism in 2013, that is seriously flawed, that puts consumers
at risk, that consumers don’t want.”
The timeline for phasing in enormous volumes of
renewable fuel is laid out in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, but the
schedule has turned out to be impractical, forcing year-by-year adjustments. In
the years since the law was passed, imports of oil have declined sharply and
domestic production has risen.
Meanwhile, American oil production has increased in
ways not expected in 2007, because of a new drilling technique, horizontal
drilling in shale combined with fracking, the same technique that has flooded
the market with natural gas.
Last month, domestic
oil production exceeded oil imports for the first time in years. That has
led the oil refiners to argue that requiring ethanol use to displace oil
imports is no longer so important, and that the whole system of mandates should
be dropped.
At the same time, there has also been a decline in the
overall demand for motor fuel, and it is poised to go yet lower. Demand had
been growing, year by year, and Congress expected it to continue to do so. The
2007 law set ethanol quotas that would have meant a modest percentage increase
in the amount of ethanol used in the mix.
Instead, ethanol became an unexpectedly large
percentage of total fuel supply, and began to push up against the barrier of 10
percent, the maximum ethanol fraction allowable in most gasoline.
Millions of cars can handle blends of up to 85 percent
ethanol, “flex fuel” vehicles, but few consumers like that fuel so few filling
stations sell it.
Those that do are struggling. For example, on Nov. 6, a
Sunoco station at a suburban mall in Potomac, Md.,
about 15 miles northwest of the E.P.A. headquarters, opened an E85 pump, with a
formal ribbon-cutting and speeches by Maryland
officials. But the manager, Amit Sharma, said Friday that the pump was selling
only 60 to 70 gallons a day. “It’s nothing,” he said. One problem, according to
Mr. Sharma and others, is that many people drive the flex fuel vehicles, but do
not understand that means they can accept up to 85 percent ethanol.
In another strategy to dispose of rising volumes of
ethanol, the producers have pushed the E.P.A. into allowing a blend that is 15
percent ethanol rather than 10, but few gas stations are equipped to sell that,
and since it is approved only for newer cars, few stations have spent the money
to refit their pumps to handle it. In addition, trade associations for
companies that make power garden equipment and boat engines complain that that
fuel will cause breakdowns.
The E.P.A. will now take public comment, which is
certain to be voluminous, as the issue is crucial not only to corn farmers, who
produce most of the feedstock for ethanol, and for oil companies, whose product
can be displaced by the fuel, but also to all other corn customers, including
livestock producers, grocers and restaurant chains.
Ethanol, the most prominent of the renewable fuels,
divides environmentalists. It may involve modestly lower carbon production, but
the increased market for it may also have increased farmers’ use of fragile,
marginal land. Its effect on fuel prices at the pump is disputed.
