Get Ready For More Ethanol In Your Gas

Flex Fuel badge (Credit: Ford)

Hope you like ethanol in your gas, because the EPA is about to go on an ethanol bonanza. The government agency shocked pretty much everyone by recommending a huge increase in ethanol volume for fuel. This happened, despite plenty of people fighting against high amounts of ethanol.

Sometimes, you just can’t win.

Back in May, the EPA made some recommendations for ethanol use, and they were fairly high. Last week, the floodgates were opened far wider. We’re about to see 19.2 billion gallons of ethanol and other forms of biofuel hit the market. That’s 1.2 billion gallons more than was allowed for 2016. Originally, the EPA was shooting for 18.8 billion gallons.

There are plenty of arguments against using ethanol, including that it’s a waste of food resources. Demand for E85 and E15 have been low, because people don’t want them. Apparently, the EPA thinks these concerns are weak.

The EPA has some interesting ideas to entice everyone to use ethanol. One is to offer E16 to E50 fuel blends to the flex fuel lineup, joining E85, because that will magically change everything. We’d need more flex fuel vehicles and pumps able to blend in the ethanol for this plan to even work. For now, it seems those two things aren’t going to happen.