OPINION: Putting Consumers in the Driver’s Seat with E85

by Robert White (Renewable Fuels Association/Ethanol Producer Magazine) While we eagerly await EPA approval of year-round E15, let’s not forget that roughly one out of every 10 vehicles on the road today is a flex fuel vehicle (FFV) that can use ethanol flex fuels containing as much as 85 percent ethanol.

If the FFVs already on the road today refueled with E85 flex fuel even half of the time, demand for ethanol would increase by a whopping 5 billion gallons. But education is key. For greater market expansion, we need to ensure consumers can find E85 at their local stations, and we need to push automakers to continue making lots of FFVs.

E85 has been in the marketplace for more than two decades and its presence continues to grow. There are now more than 4,500 retail stations that offer E85 or other flex fuels. E85 is higher octane than all unleaded options today, and reduces emissions more than 30 percent over traditional gasoline. Plus, E85 typically offers a price discount to traditional gasoline, lowering the cost per mile for consumers.

Lots of retailers offer E85, providing opportunity to attract new customers by offering a unique product. Because E85 is typically priced at a discount to all unleaded grades, retailers are able to display a much lower price on their signs than their competition, increasing traffic to their station and letting the education process start organically. Additionally, introducing E85 can also offer opportunities for other midlevel ethanol blends, such as E15 and E30. Most retailers that offer higher blends of ethanol note new customers, not just existing customers converting to these new fuels, which also means increased sales inside.

There are now more than 24 million FFVs on the road, which represents roughly 10 percent of all registered vehicles. Plus, federally-regulated fleets that operate FFVs also must use E85 if it is available within 5 miles or 15 minutes of your station. Those are all potential new customers for you!

RFA continues to work on efforts to encourage greater E85 availability, such as reinstatement of more robust fuel economy credits that automakers received for producing flex fuel models. RFA is also engaged in efforts to reinstate the extension of the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Tax Credit, which provides a tax credit of 30 percent, up to $30,000, to help defer the costs of additional infrastructure needed to offer E85. READ MORE

Excerpt from Ethanol Producer Magazine: In addition to the short-term benefits, offering E15 also allows for future growth. All the Casey’s stores currently offering the fuel use blender pumps to blend E85 into E15. That allows Casey’s to change its offerings to meet market demand as needed. “We’re really setting it up on the front end to be able to have all this capability if it does move to these higher mid-level blends like a 20 or a 30,” Doddridge said.

Casey’s also has plans to expand its E15 offerings to more stores. Doddridge says that all newly-opened stores will sell E15. He adds that the company is also looking at adding E15 to already-existing stores, thanks to President Trump’s announcement. “We can have suppliers now start selling us E15 from the rack, preblended, so we don’t have to have extra tankage at the store to blend it,” which he says will lower the capital expense required to offer E15. He adds three of the company’s fuel suppliers have said they’ll provide Casey’s with preblended E15.

Within the retail industry, Doddridge said many retailers believe the key to offering E15 is consistent messaging and branding. That’s why Casey’s sells E15 using Growth Energy’s Unleaded88 branding. “We’ve seen adoption of that much faster when we have the Unleaded88. … We compete in a lot of markets with other retailers like Kwik Trip and Kum & Go, and each one of them call it something different than we were originally calling it. … Just to kind of provide more continuity and more consistency, we felt like Unleaded88 was a natural fit for us.” he said. READ MORE