Lobbying battle intensifies as E15 ethanol bill nears US vote

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Lobbying battle intensifies as E15 ethanol bill nears US vote

By Siddharth Cavale and Jarrett Renshaw
Tue, May 12, 2026 at 1:29 PM EDT
3 min read

NEW YORK, May 12 (Reuters) - Biofuel advocates are making a last-minute push to convince House lawmakers to approve year-round sales of gasoline blended with higher volumes of ethanol ahead of a vote on Capitol Hill this week, as ‌the refining sector seeks to sink the effort.

The vote for year-round gasoline blended with 15% ethanol (E15) represents the closest the industry has gotten ‌so far to achieving a major goal they have sought for years, but they still face opposition from lawmakers in refining states and uncertainty in a deeply divided Senate.

-snip-

If passed, ⁠the H.R. 1346 bill, or the Nationwide Consumer and Fuel Retailer Choice Act, would allow, but not require, fuel retailers to sell gasoline blended with 15% ethanol year‑round nationwide, while also tightening rules for refineries seeking exemptions from the Environmental ⁠Protection Agency's record biofuel-blending requirements on economic hardship grounds.

The E15 blend is typically barred during the summer months due to smog concerns, though the Trump administration has temporarily waived that restriction for 20 days from May 1 to help curb gasoline prices that have spiked since the Iran war.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/lobbying-battle-intensifies-e15-ethanol-172933787.html

[hunter]

1. Yet another environmental disaster that claimed to be green...

... but turned out not to be in actual practice.

I was very familiar with all the "alternative energy" technologies of the 'seventies. Most of them did not turn out well. Nevertheless, they seem to return in cycles only to fail again and again, sometimes at larger scales.

For some of these the ideas were untenable from the start. I put "the hydrogen economy" in this category. The numbers just don't work and they never did.

Now that we've built gigawatt scale solar/wind/battery power systems and have the actual numbers it's pretty clear those won't displace fossil fuels to any significant extent.

Support for these energy technologies is just another way of denying global warming, a way of endlessly putting off until tomorrow what needs to be done today.

The worst example of this is fusion energy. How long will it take for that to work? It seems likely to me it will never be a viable source of energy, not in this universe.

Government support of fuel ethanol is just an ugly subsidy to a filthy industry.