There was testimony once again on Capitol Hill regarding the Environmental Protection Agency proposal that would — for the first time since the Renewable Fuel Standard passed in 2007 — decrease the amount of biofuel required in the overall fuel supply. The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works met Tuesday to hear testimony from and ask questions of several stakeholders on both sides of the proposal.
“The truth is, we have hit the ethanol blend wall,” Chris Grundler, director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, told the committee. “We are acknowledging the blend wall has been reached. We’re making an estimation of a reasonable amount of ethanol that can be consumed with the current system in place.”
The “blend wall” is the term given to the amount of ethanol that can be blended into fuel with existing infrastructure that will not damage small engines and marine engines.
“Fuel economy improvements and other factors have resulted in lower consumption of gasoline,” Grundler said. “If gasoline demand continues to decline … increasing the amount of ethanol in the fuel supply will result in higher concentrations of ethanol.”
Grundler wouldn’t say whether exceeding the blend wall would increase gasoline prices, but he did say that “infrastructure clearly needs to adapt if we’re going to use higher blend walls. We didn’t think it would be feasible to reach that level of infrastructure for 2014.” Read more….
.