Selling petrol in the United States is no simple task for there is a restriction applied to the fuel which varies over the year, and in between states, known as the RVP or Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP).
This is a measure of the volatility of the fuel and limits are set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a bid to maintain air quality, especially in urban areas during the summer months.
The standard limit is 9 pounds per square inch (psi) during the months of June through to September, but in a bid to increase the use of bioethanol, there is a 1psi waiver for E10 fuels, which are those containing 10% ethanol.
Blending issues
Blending ethanol and petrol increases the RVP and a situation arose in which retailers were unable to sell E10 in the summer, so they didn’t invest in the extra tanks and pumps necessary to sell it at all, restricting the availability of the fuel.
To counter this, the EPA introduced the RVP waiver by which states could apply for an emergency increase of the limit to 10psi to allow E10 to be sold all year round.
However, this only went half way because thee was no guarantee that the waiver would be present every year for it depended on it being applied for annually, and that in turn, was subject to political pressures.
With a change of government pending in the United States, a spending bill was introduced to keep the government ticking over until the new incumbent is established as president. This bill includes a provision to allow sales of E15 blends nationwide and throughout the year.
In a stroke, this not only does away with the need for the RVP waiver, but opens the door for a 15% blend to become freely available across the whole of the US, encouraging retailers to install the infrastructure needed to stock and sell it.
Senator Fischer pushes for ethanol
This change did not happen all on its own. Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska had sponsored a bill to make the blend available all year round, noting that it was part of the Republicans’ drive to exploit the country’s energy reserves.
Nebraska is America’s second largest producer of ethanol for blending into fuels. It has 24 operating ethanol plants across the state which produce more than two billion US gallons of renewable fuel annually while creating up to 1,400 jobs.
Presently, 40% of US maize goes to ethanol production and while this development will not affect the use of ethanol in diesels, which can only run on a maximum inclusion of 7%, it is likely to increase demand for maize and so lift crop prices generally.
A study undertaken by the US Department of Energy suggested that between 2005 and 2019, corn ethanol contributed to a 500-million-tonne reduction in total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Now that larger amounts of ethanol can be used all year round throughout the US, that figure is likely to be substantially added to and more land turned over to naturally capture of solar energy in a way that is immediately reversible.
