Senate Bill Introduced To End Ethanol Mandate For Gasoline

A decade ago, the biofuel ethanol was viewed as one way to reduce the nation's consumption of oil for transportation fuel.

In 2007, Congress approved the Renewable Fuels Standard, which mandated increasing amounts of ethanol gradually be blended into the fuel supply.

Now, those rules could be struck down.

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Ethanol was seen as a homegrown way to reduce dependence on foreign oil and keep money spent on transportation fuel in the country, while cutting overall carbon emissions due to its theoretically carbon-neutral status.

But the bulk of U.S. ethanol was and remains based on distillation of corn, a far less efficient feedstock than either the sugar cane used in Brazil or the cellulosic sources that were expected to improve yields substantially.

Since 2007, sources of cellulosic ethanol simply haven't come on line in the volumes required to meet the EPA rules implementing the Congressional requirements.

Meanwhile, the fracking boom, stringent new corporate average fuel economy regulations, and the emergence of modern plug-in electric cars have lessened the national security and environmental impetus for the ethanol mandate.

So roughly eight years after the Renewable Fuels Standard was passed into law, a bill that would end the ethanol mandate entirely has been introduced, The Hill reports..

Called the "Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act of 2015," the bill was introduced Thursday by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), with Semator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) as an additional cosponsor.

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The legislation had originally been introduced as an amendment to the bill approving the Keystone XL Pipeline--which President Barack Obama vetoed last week.

The Senators argue that the current rule drives up the price of corn, which in turn causes food prices to rise. They claim 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop is currently used for fuel production.

They also claim the ethanol mandate discourages the development of other alternative fuels, and that refiners will soon hit a "blend wall"--at which point no more ethanol can be added to gasoline.