Ethanol Industry Blasts EPA 'Hogwash'

by John Siciliano (Washington Examiner) The ethanol industry will lay into the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday for proposing a 2017 renewable fuel standard that it says is based on oil industry "hogwash."

The industry also will threaten continued litigation if EPA doesn't change the standard to the level outlined by Congress.

In the presidential election year, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump has called for a phaseout of the standards, but that doesn't mean repealing it entirely. When he was in Iowa, Trump actually seemed to want the EPA to follow the law for the program. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans continue to ask for either repeal or reform of the RFS, but the debate over the program has quieted down in recent months.

Bob Dinneen, long-time president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, the lead trade group for the ethanol industry, said he will tell EPA he is baffled and confused as to why the agency is ignoring Congress to buy into the oil industry's fiction.

"First, there is no magical marketplace limit or constraint on ethanol at 9.7 percent," says Dinneen, in prepared remarks obtained by the Washington Examiner. He says several oil and refiner groups "suggest exceeding that 9.7 percent threshold is somehow 'dangerous for consumers.' Hogwash!

"In fact, the marketplace has already demonstrated that it can handle much higher levels of ethanol," he says.

The Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department's analysis arm, shows that gasoline in 27 states contained more than 9.7 percent ethanol on average in 2014. Twenty-three of those states are blending above 10 percent as a result of higher 15- and 85-percent ethanol-to-gasoline fuel blends made available at gas stations.

The ethanol industry has taken the EPA to court over the issue, saying the EPA misinterpreted the law to lower the ethanol requirements. Dinneen says the agency can waive the corn ethanol requirement only if there is a shortage of ethanol.

But the blend wall issue is not a supply issue, as the U.S. is producing record amounts of the alcohol fuel. It's a distribution issue, he says. READ MORE and MORE (MissouriNet.com) and MORE / MORE (National Biodiesel Board) and MORE (NewsPressNow)