Three biofuels groups are asking for a rehearing on a recent appeals court decision that blocked the sale of E15 year-round. The approval of E15 sales during the summer driving season was made by the Trump Administration.
The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), Growth Energy and the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) filed a petition this week. The petition says a rehearing is needed because of what the groups say are significant legal errors in the three-judge panel’s decision handed down earlier this summer.
The groups also say if the decision is allowed to stand it would have devastating consequences for the market expansion of homegrown biofuels.
“For this summer driving season, because of the way the legal proceedings will move forward, I think we should be able to protect the summer driving season. But we will need as an industry to find a fix in order to allow drivers to use E15 next summer,” says Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy.
The hurdle to clear sales of E15 during the summer driving season was a priority of biofuels industry for nearly a decade.
“That was something our industry had been working on for a decade, we finally got some traction with the Trump administration got that regulatory fix approved, the oil refiners sued EPA over that regulatory fix, and the D.C. Circuit Court, unfortunately, sided with the refiners and overturned that EPA rule that allowed year round E15,” says Geoff Cooper, CEO of RFA.
Just days after the court decision came down, renewable fuels groups knew the victory that took a decade to achieve would come with no easy fix. But through legal action, and work on Capitol Hill, the groups say the fight to clear sales of E15 year-round wasn’t over.
“We’re going to have to work that much harder and put that much more blood, sweat and tears into expanding the market for E15,” Cooper adds. “We had seen tremendous progress in the E15 market expansion over the past few years. And that really occurred after we secured that that approval to sell the fuel year-round.
The Renewable Fuels Association says this is the third summer that E15 sales had the green light. Last summer, more than 21 hundred stations offered E15. A decade ago, that number was zero.
“We had more than 100 more stations in the hopper ready to go and had some big retail chains in ‘wait and see mode’ on the sidelines,” says Cooper. “ And yes, we’re concerned that this court decision is going to keep some of those potential players on the sidelines until there’s more clarity around where we go from here with E15.”
