The proposal, which has been drafted with feedback from the US Department of Energy and US Department of Agriculture, includes levels of renewable fuels to be blended into gasoline and diesel as required by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
EPA is proposing to reduce the advanced biofuel and total renewable fuel standards for 2014 and maintain the same volume for biomass-based diesel for 2014 and 2015 that was adopted for 2013 (1.28 billion gallons).
As per the proposal, the EPA has set the cellulosic biofuel standard at 17 million gallons, significantly lower than CAA target of 1.75 billion gallons.
The country has witnessed a rapid growth of renewable fuel production in recent years, while gasoline consumption, owing to vehicle fuel economy and other economic factors, is lower than expected when Congress passed the renewable fuel standard in 2007.
The US currently sells nearly all gasoline in ‘E10’ configuration, which is a fuel with up to 10% ethanol. Due to lower gasoline consumption rate, the country is now at the ‘E10 blend wall’, the point at which the E10 fuel pool is saturated with ethanol.
The blend wall can be defined as the difficulty in incorporating increasing amounts of ethanol into the transportation fuel supply at volumes exceeding those achieved by the sale of nearly all gasoline as E10. The new proposal seeks input on different approaches to address the ‘E10 blend wall’.
