The House handed the biofuels industry a long-fought win Wednesday, approving legislation to lift summer restrictions on the sale of the higher-ethanol gasoline blend E15.
“This has been a long time coming,” said House Agriculture ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota, who joined the ethanol fight when she was elected to Congress in 2018.
Wednesday’s passage by 218-203 shifts attention to the Senate, where the measure isn’t likely to stand alone for a vote and could instead be attached to other legislation — which in turn would mean another test in the House before it could become law.
Ninety-five House Democrats voted for the bill, and 90 Republicans opposed it. The vote came after years of lobbying by the ethanol industry and equal efforts by petroleum interests to thwart the idea.
In the end, shifts in the transportation fuels business — including more investment in biofuels by big oil companies — have helped blur the battle lines on crop-based fuels, dampening Big Oil opposition to E15.
The issue was helped as well by two other factors: difficult economic conditions in farm country, and the sudden and sharp increase in gas prices brought on by the war in Iran. E15 sells for as much as 50 cents per gallon less than regular gasoline in some areas, and lawmaker after lawmaker cited the gap as reason to support the bill.
“E15 is a massive win for the American farmer,” said Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.) during floor debate. “Beyond the farm, the economic impact is staggering.”
Others, including Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), were more grudging in their support. Tonko said he was reluctantly voting for the bill, noting the savings at the pump but saying Congress should do more to promote electric vehicles and a wider variety of energy sources in the renewable fuel standard. That’s an approach EPA has ditched in the second Trump administration.
Tonko called the bill a “missed opportunity.”
Only small refining companies and their allies, as well as environmental groups, broadly opposed to biofuel mandates, remained consistently and publicly against making E15 available year-round.
Groups representing small refiners said the present cost savings won’t hold up over time, and environmental groups said increases in biofuel only put more strain on land that might be converted to corn to make ethanol.
The Fueling American Jobs Coalition, representing independent small refineries and affiliated union workers, called the measure “reckless” and urged the Senate to reject it in favor of changes to the renewable fuel standard.
“This bill is a backdoor expansion of the ethanol mandate that strips away the last remaining protections for small and independent refiners, while doing nothing to address the broken RFS compliance system driving volatile costs across fuel markets,” the coalition said in a statement.
‘Make the market work’
The measure would end seasonal restrictions linked to fuel volatility that contributes to smog. But the industry says E15 has lower volatility than the 10-percent blend sold throughout the country now.
It wouldn’t require retailers to sell E15, which is sold in about 5,000 gas stations nationwide and not in every state, according to the ethanol group Growth Energy.
“This is going to be the market at work,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), a co-sponsor of the bill.
Small refinery companies say the measure wouldn’t do enough to protect them from the costs of complying with the RFS, which come largely from the renewable fuel credits they buy in order to show compliance with the RFS, as an alternative to actually blending biofuel. The result, groups representing small refining companies say, could be closures of independent refineries in some areas.
Despite the hard push by many farm groups to boost E15, the proposal ran into a late wrinkle when the Congressional Budget Office said it would cost the government a net $2.3 billion from 2026 to 2036 and cause a drop in demand for biodiesel made from soybeans.
The cost doesn’t come from boosting E15, the CBO said, but rather from provisions giving small refineries temporary opt-outs from biofuel blending mandates if they’re facing severe economic harm.
The proposal replaces the current small refinery exemptions with a new system that allows refining companies in economic peril a temporary reprieve and blocks EPA from reassigning the exempted volumes to other refineries — provisions the small refiners say won’t help them much.
The CBO said the bill would decrease demand for, and production of, biomass-based diesel that’s mainly derived from soybeans. Lower soybean prices would mean more government price support payments to farmers, the CBO said.
The budget office said its estimate comes with the caveat that projecting E15 adoption is uncertain, as is the effect on biomass-based diesel.
Similarly, an updated analysis by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri said the proposal would depress soybean prices while raising corn prices. It would lower overall consumer fuel costs, the FAPRI analysis said.
‘Senate ain’t taking it up’
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), ranking member on the House Rules Committee, predicted the measure wouldn’t go far in the Senate due to the cost projections and a decision by the House leadership to consider it separately from the five-year farm bill.
“I think everybody’s pretty certain that the Senate ain’t taking it up,” McGovern said.
But the proposal has strong support from corn-state senators, including Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), who raised the issue with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin at a hearing Wednesday.
Fischer is the main sponsor of a bill in the Senate to lift the seasonal restrictions, which she and other supporters are looking to attach to any piece of must-pass legislation.
Fischer asked Zeldin if the E15 legislation or any actions EPA has taken on E15 amount to a mandate to sell it, to which Zeldin said no.
Zeldin said he also isn’t aware of any refinery that closed because of the summer sales of E15 that EPA has allowed through emergency waivers since 2019.
“So we basically had E15 year-round for eight years and the sky did not fall,” Fischer said.
