EPA approves year-round E15 in Midwest beginning in 2025

Nearly two years after a receiving a petition from eight governors, the Environmental Protection Agency approved on Thursday the year-round sale of higher-blend E15 gasoline in the Midwest, beginning in 2025. Corn growers and ethanol groups said temporary waivers will be needed for E15 again this summer, because otherwise sales will be banned in most of the country under air pollution laws.

The Biden administration has issued waivers for summertime E15 since 2022, a stopgap remedy following a U.S. appeals court decision in 2021 that the Trump administration had overstepped its authority in 2019 when it approved summertime sales. Before then, sales were banned from June 1 to Sept. 15 in two-thirds of the country as a precaution against smog.

Shortly after President Biden’s announcement of an emergency waiver in April 2022 for summertime E15, the governors of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin petitioned the EPA for a regulatory solution that would allow the sale of E15 year-round. After months of review, the agency approved the request.

The EPA said gasoline refiners and distributors would need time to adjust to its decision on E15, so it chose an implementation date of April 28, 2025. The agency said there were “concerns over insufficient fuel supply” with an earlier start date.

“Even 2025 would be problematic,” said the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade group. “Refiners start making the switch to summer production very early in the year, and to minimize costs, there must be a reasonable transition to producing summer gas according to a different specification.”

Legislation for year-round sales has made little headway in Congress.

“As the saying goes, better late than never, but EPA had a legal responsibility to approve E15 year-round in these states more than a year and a half ago, so postponing the effective date to April 28, 2025, is disappointing,” said Brian Jennings, chief executive of the American Coalition for Ethanol. Like other ethanol advocates, Jennings said the EPA was obligated to respond to the governors’ petition within 90 days.

The National Corn Growers Association said it was “concerned about the implications of the timeline for growers and consumers this summer” but cheered by the approval of year-round sales in the Midwest starting in 2025.