NAAA eNewsletter - 04/21/2022

Last week, the Biden administration announced that it will lift the summertime ban on E15 gasoline to help ease high gas prices. E15 is a mix of regular gasoline and a smaller amount of ethanol, a plant-based fuel typically made from corn in the U.S. The “15” in the name means that it includes 15% ethanol. Even regular gasoline typically has up to a 10% ethanol blend (E10), so E15 is just more biofuel in your gas.

The logic behind Biden’s order is that gas that requires less crude oil—which is very expensive right now—could help ease high gas prices. The Biden administration estimates gas prices will be, on average, about 10 cents cheaper after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) waives the E15 ban during the summer months. The Biden administration is replicating a Trump administration move to waive the E15 rule in 2019. The move by Trump’s EPA was later blocked by a panel of federal judges.

E15 is meant to be a cleaner form of gasoline because it includes biofuel—which is considered “carbon neutral”—and burns cleaner than 100% gasoline. Ethanol is essentially alcohol—and because alcohol evaporates more quickly, putting more ethanol into gasoline makes the fuel evaporate more quickly. So when gasoline is blended with ethanol, the resulting fuel becomes more volatile and evaporates more easily. However, the evaporated particles react with sunlight to create more smog, which may cause respiratory issues for some people.

In other biofuel news, Chevron USA and Bunge North America announced a new joint venture to move forward with alternative fuels, such as biodiesel from soybeans. Chevron expects to create the capacity to produce 100,000 barrels per day of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel by 2030. All of the expected biodiesel production, should all of the projects come online in two years, would require domestic soybean production to increase by 98%.

In addition, the EPA is proposing a renewable fuel pathway for canola oil as an advanced biofuel. Based on a greenhouse gas (GHG) lifecycle analysis, the EPA determined that renewable diesel, jet fuel, naphtha, liquefied petroleum gas and heating oil produced from canola oil “reduce GHG emissions by at least 50 percent compared to petroleum.” According to the U.S. Canola Association, “Canola oil-based biofuels are cleaner-burning alternatives to petroleum that can replace or be blended with it. Renewable diesel, for example, is a ‘drop-in’ biofuel that is chemically similar to petroleum so it can be used in existing transportation vehicles at 100 percent replacement without blending.” The comment period on this renewable fuel pathway runs until the middle of next month.