As EPA Hands Down New Rules on Renewable Fuel Standard, Critics Say 'Blend Wall' a Fiction Created by Big Oil

by Paul Alexander (Huffington Post) ... For the first time since it was conceived a decade ago, the Obama Administration has proposed weakening the RFS -- a blow to the green movement, the biofuels business, and especially the ethanol industry.

The reduced requirements, to be finalized by November 30, are meaningful. "For 2015," The Wall Street Journal reported, "the EPA proposes...16.3 billion gallons, about four billion less than what the law requires. The EPA is proposing a level of 17.4 billion gallons for 2016, compared with the statute level of 22.5 billion gallons." The original law required the petroleum industry to use 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022, only seven years from now. With these weakened standards, that goal will be all but impossible to meet.

The announcement also included requirements for 2014. That's because the EPA never finalized proposed RFS guidelines it issued in November 2013. For more than a year and a half, the Obama Administration has offered no direction on this vital issue that affects the energy industry. Not surprisingly, the agency set the requirement for 2014 at the amount that was actually blended that year -- 15.93 billion gallons.

Jack Gerard of the American Petroleum Institute declared: "Today's announcement makes abundantly clear that the only solution is for Congress to repeal or significantly reform the RFS."

That, simply put, is the goal of Big Oil: to kill the RFS, a concept the industry has fought from the start. The main argument Big Oil uses against the RFS says there is a so-called "blend wall," a maximum percentage of ethanol that can be blended with gasoline.

But consider this. From the beginning, cars were meant to run on either gasoline or ethanol. Indeed, Henry Ford designed the original Model T to run on gasoline or ethanol, as in 100 percent ethanol. And today in Brazil cars are powered by fuel blends using up to 27 percent ethanol. The idea that there is some reason why ethanol should be capped at 10 percent has led oil industry critics to charge that the blend wall is a fiction made up by Big Oil to protect its self-interest -- and its profits.

Indeed, as late as May 2012, the Department of Energy was planning on E15, E20, or blends with even higher percentages of ethanol. That month, the department wrote: "The Energy Department testing program was run on standard gasoline, E10, E15, and E20.... The resulting Energy Department data showed no statistically significant loss of vehicle performance (emissions, fuel economy, and maintenance issues) attributable to the use of E15 fuel compared to straight gasoline." READ MORE