Since the beginning of 2022, gasoline prices have risen over 40%. Because of the adverse consequences of high prices for U.S. consumers, the Biden administration has been trying to find policies to provide immediate relief.
On April 12, 2022 the Administration announced plans for EPA to issue an emergency waiver to allow summertime sales of gasoline blends of E15 (gasoline blended with 15% ethanol). Currently, gasoline has ethanol at a maximum of 10% in most parts of the U.S.
While fuel ethanol prices have risen also, they have increased at much slower rates than that of gasoline. On a volumetric basis during 2022, the price of wholesale ethanol has averaged 56 cents less than that of wholesale gasoline blendstock.
However, ethanol has 70% of the energy density of non-ethanol blended gasoline (E0). E10 has 97% of the energy density; E15 has 95.5%. This implies that for the same volumetric amount of fuel, a motor vehicle would have lower mileage using E15 compared to using E10.
In addition, only about 2,300 of the U.S.’s 150,000 filling stations have appropriate pump and tank hardware to handle gasoline blends above 10%.
From the EPRINC Chart of the Week archive.