BLOOMINGTON, Ill. - President Donald Trump’s “Declaring a National Emergency” order permits the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with the Secretary of Energy’s concurrence, to issue emergency fuel waivers to enable year-round E15 gasoline sales. Trump’s January 20 executive order said, “The energy and critical minerals identification, leasing, development, production, transportation, refining, and generation capacity of the United States are all far too inadequate to meet our Nation’s needs. We need a reliable, diversified, and affordable supply of energy to drive our Nation’s manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and defense industries, and to sustain the basics of modern life and military preparedness.”

According to Dave Loos, director of biofuels and research for the Illinois Corn Growers Association (ICGA), Midwest producers should be “very encouraged” that Trump’s directive will lead to a large expansion of demand for corn-based ethanol. “I really think that there is a pathway forward here that Trump initiated on his first day in office,” he said. “In my mind I think the Trump administration is looking to do this in the next CR (Congressional Continuing resolution) round, which is in March. It gives me a lot of hope.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) had originally green-lighted year-round E15 (along with a higher ethanol blend, E20) back in 2011 under the Obama administration, following durability and performance testing at Oak Ridge Laboratory. After lobbying several administrations and congressional bodies for more than 13 years, Trump’s executive order may finally bring some resolution to the efforts of Loos and other state ethanol proponents. 

“We’ve been waiting a long time for this to come through. In 2015 and 2016, Trump actually had USEPA grant a year-round waiver for E15 that was thrown out by the court, and we went back to the emergency waiver that we’ve been kind of living on through 2024. But I really feel positive toward a permanent solution here; I think congress is on board and I’ve heard that the (House) speaker (Rep. Mike Johnson) is interested in getting this done,” said Loos. 

Loos noted that the economic impact of year-round E15 on the Illinois farm and rural economy would be “huge,” though it’s difficult to assign a dollar amount to the expected impact. Illinois’ corn contribution to ethanol is around 26.3 percent, meaning over a quarter of production already goes towards the ethanol industry. 2.29 billion bushels of corn nationwide could be impacted by a year-round E15 policy, according to the National Corn Growers Association.

“It’s really hard to predict because we have already had E15 out in the marketplace for quite a few years in the summer months, and it’s hard to gauge how consumers are going to respond,” he said. “Something we are going to have to figure out is what our potential demand is going to be, because (E15) is not a mandate, it’s an option for the consumer. I would say that conservatively over the next 3 or 4 years we could do 400 million gallons of new ethanol, maybe. That might be on the high end, but that’s close to 133 million bushels of corn, so the impact is there.”

Loos added that those numbers will only be attainable if consumers are motivated to purchase corn-based E15, which he called a cleaner, higher performing blend of fuel than E10, which is available at nearly every gas station. Only around one percent of fuel efficiency is sacrificed with the higher ethanol blend, according to Loos. He also sees no issue with infrastructure and capacity to accommodate more ethanol production. 

“We’ve got plenty of room and capacity for ethanol right now to very easily accommodate new growth in E15. And we have capacity in corn; we need new demand for corn,” Loos said, adding that he is also closely monitoring legislation in the California general assembly that would allow year-round E15 sales in the state. “California is a huge market for ethanol and E10, probably 1.2 billion gallons (annually) of E10. If we get a fraction of that, it would be a nice (demand) increase.”

Loos sees the potential green-lighting of national year-round E15 sales as just one step towards even higher ethanol blends being introduced into the nation’s fuel supply. “Our ultimate goal is to move to higher blends of ethanol — E20, E30 — through an octane standard that would give the autos better efficiency around higher-performance engines, along with lower emissions,” he said. 

The Next Generation Fuels Act (HR 2434), originally introduced by retired Illinois Congresswoman Cheri Bustos and now sponsored by an Iowa representative, would serve as the legislative vehicle to drive changes in how the auto industry builds motor vehicle engines to accommodate high octane, low-emission fuel blends such as E20 or E30. According to research, the high-octane, low-carbon fuel mandated for engines through HR 2434, once fully integrated into the marketplace, would increase ethanol demand by more than 5 billion gallons — equal to more than 1.8 billion corn bushels — per year.