American Coalition for Ethanol members meeting on Capitol Hill with lawmakers this week found them to be just as frustrated as the ethanol industry about getting E15 legislation in Congress.

“We visited about seven different House Representatives and Senators, and the main theme is they’re frustrated too,” said Harmon Wilts with Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company (CVEC) in Minnesota. “Two different times it was in the legislation, it should have been passed, and it was pulled at the last minute by just a handful of folks that were able to do that. A lot of it centers around the SREs, the RVOs, and the small refineries. So I think that’s kind of been the biggest thing. But most folks are like, hey, this is fairly simple.”

Scott McPheeters with KAAPA Ethanol in Nebraska heard the same thing during his visits with ethanol-friendly legislators. “I think they’re pretty frustrated that the E15 thing has been so long and there’s actually really nothing negative about it. It doesn’t cost the government anything. It saves consumers money. It puts money in farmers pockets,” said McPheeters. “But it’s also hard because some of our lawmakers have gotten battle fatigue, you might call it, where they have said, we’ve been at this so long and we just need to move on and we can’t move on… It’s just what we need.”

While the chances of getting any E15 legislation this year seem to be dwindling, Reuters reports today that the Trump administration is contemplating a temporary suspension of the federal restrictions requiring summer-blend gasoline, which would lower prices at the pump while also allowing continued sales of E15 in the summer months.

Listen to interviews with Wilts and McPheeters below:
Harmon Wilts, CVEC (9:49)
Scott McPheeters, KAAPA Ethanol (7:00)

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