The big topic at the 2026 Commodity Classic last week was the need for year-round, nationwide E15, but despite the roadblocks the number of stations selling higher blends continues to increase, according to American Coalition for Ethanol Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Ron Lamberty.
Education is the way to get more stations in the nation to carry higher ethanol blends, and Lamberty says ACE has a fuel cost calculator for retailers to find out just what that can do for them. “And what we’ve got on there is marketers who’ve sold E15 and E85 and E30 talking about how they sold it, how they gained market share,” said Lamberty. “And the reason it’s important to have it on a website is because about 60% of the stations in the country are owned by single station owners and they work in the station. So they may not be able to go to a fuel market or trade show or a workshop, but they can get online anytime. So those tools are there 24/7.”
ACE also has a compatibility tool so retailers can find out if their equipment is capable of selling higher ethanol blends. “They can plug in the names and numbers of all their equipment they use and find out that it’s all compatible or in some rare cases, it’s not…So there’s all those things and that’s on our website, which is flexfuelforward.com.”
Lamberty noted that no one expects ethanol to completely replace gasoline, but neither can electric vehicles. “Where it makes sense and where you can use E85, use it. Where you can use E15, do that… there’s a tractor here (at Commodity Classic) that runs on E98. And that probably wouldn’t have happened five or 10 years ago because there wasn’t as big a gap between ethanol price and diesel price as there is now. And now you’re looking at diesel prices that are a couple of bucks a gallon more than ethanol. And so it makes sense to maybe run those on E85 now, because even though you’ll have less BTU per gallon, by the time you adjust for the different mileage or hours that you’re running, you’re going to save money.”
Learn more in this interview.
American Coalition for Ethanol Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Ron Lamberty
Classic26 - Ron Lamberty, ACE (15:12)