AP reports that Biden will announce that he'll suspend the federal rule preventing the sale of higher ethanol blend gasoline this summer. His administration has been frantically attempting every reckless move to to limit midterm election damaging high gas prices, caused by multiple policy and foreign diplomacy failures.
Mostly a 10% ethanol gas blend (E10) is sold in the US, but Biden is expected to issue an emergency EPA waiver that normally prohibits the sale of 15% ethanol gas blends (E15) in summer months between June 1 and Sept. 15. These higher ethanol blends are well known to contribute to smog and form ozone,. As a result, the U.S. Clean Air Act bans the sale of E15 in some states during those summer months.
Waiving of the E15 restriction has been done in the past, such as Obama's EPA in response to Hurricane Harvey in 2017. When Trump attempted to permanently remove it in 2019, to ease regulation restrictions and address climate change, his opponents accused it of being a climate destructive act and successfully sued, getting activists circuit court judges to overturn the EPA rule change, which remained after the Supreme Court refused to hear appeals.
Gas blends with more ethanol, which is processed from corn, is frequently attributed to both being good for the environment, while also frequently being attributed to being bad for the environment, depending on who is making the rule changes. While ozone and smog aren't great and impact people with asthma, replacing a portion of gas consumption with an alternative is considered good for the environment, by reducing carbon emissions.
The complex reality of this long assumed carbon benefit is now contested and frequently argued both ways. Various EPA backed studies have argued benefit, and various studies have contradicted them, including the U.S. Department of Energy study. This study finds that ethanol is at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline, but is criticized for cherry picking worst case scenarios and does include such projected impacts, like increased fertilizer usage resulting from ethanol driven expanding of US corn farming. New RFS federal standards are attributed to nearly 7 million acres of corn cultivation land expansion in the US between 2008 and 2016, a 8.7% growth. The US Department of Energy study attributes RFS with increasing corn prices by 30% and the prices of other crops by 20%.
While the oxygen in the ethanol molecules did substantially reduce CO emissions in older cars, its emissions benefits have largely been bypassed by modern feedback-loop injection systems, which control the air-to-fuel ratio much more closely. So why is it still in our fuel? GW Bush, with the beginning of our War Against Terror, began our national security focus on reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), was a federal program created in 2005 to reduce US emissions and lower energy reliance on other countries.
Between the gas/oil industry, countered by farming and alternative energy industries, the argument is flooded with lobbyist and studies, and passionate arguments on both sides of support for ethanol. Car manufactures who have invested heavily in developing flex-fuel vehicles long ago have also joined the brawl. Well before Biden's policy announcement was reported, we saw a huge coordinated shift in reporting, search engine results, and SEO article stuffing, in preparation.
Sen. Chuck Grassley was among nine Republican and seven Democratic senators from Midwestern states who sent Biden a letter early in his presidency, urging him to allow year-round E15 sales. Biden had struggled in the polls and made big efforts to rally in Iowa, ultimately losing the state by 8 percentage points. With the new push for ethanol regulation waivers, Biden tried to boost his support by making the announcement during a visit to an ethanol refinery in a small Iowa town Tuesday.
It is important to keep focus. Biden's E15 restriction waiver is intended to lower gas prices and expected to shave around $0.10 off the cost of a gallon. Yet, it is hard to tell if that will actually be any cost savings, as the more ethanol, the less miles per gallon vehicles usually get. Not just because many car's on the market probably still aren't well tuned for 15% ethanol, but ethanol empirically has less energy than gasoline.
Some unverified numbers show Gasoline's 117600 BTU per gallon, versus ethanol 67000 BTU per gallon. One can calculate the empirical energy of a gallon of gas mixture with the following formula, thus BTU of energy for ethanol blends:
- E10 112,540 BTU/gal
- E15 110,010 BTU/gal
- E85 74,590 BTU/gal
BTU mixture = [(Percentage ethanol times 670) + (percentage gasoline times 1176)]
(Of course: E10 is 10% ethanol (90% gasoline), E15 15%, and E85 85%)
These values are according to this carburetor shop's information page and their results come out to a 5.697% difference, rather than 5% for me, so if you're looking for high accurate specific values, you should double check and verify with another source to be sure.
Yet that carburetor shop's article is specifically bringing up the risk of damage that ethanol blends pose to older vehicles. Even some modern vehicles run poorly, wear faster, and may be damaged when using higher ethanol blends than they are designed for. This is attributed to ethanol's contribution to problems with fuels like phase separation, increased water moisture, increased volatility (which contributes to the ozone/smog risks), and damage/wear to fuel lines and seals, especially ones not designed to be more ethanol resistant. Car manufactures have known and invested in making their vehicle products support flex-fuels and higher ethanol concentrations for quite awhile now, so these vehicle damage concerns should be fading fast. Yet, your boat, lawn mower, and other gas engine devices might not do so well.
there doesn't seem to be anything here