Fuel Trade Groups Urge Retailers to Limit E15 Sales to Flex-Fuel Vehicles for Now

Fuel Trade Groups Urge Retailers to Limit E15 Sales to Flex-Fuel Vehicles for Now

By Scott Doggett October 29, 2010

By Danny King, Contributor

To use a phrase applicable to the primary method of transportation before cars came around, hold your horses.

That's what two fuel-distribution trade groups are saying to gas-station operators raring to sell more corn-based fuel to non-flex-fuel vehicles after the EPA said it'd be OK to sell ethanol blends to all model-year 2007 and newer gasoline-powered vehicles.

Washington-based ethanol lobbyist Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) and the Petroleum Marketers Association of America (PMAA) put out a joint statement saying that E15, or fuel with 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline, should still only be used in flex-fuel vehicles, or vehicles that can run on either gasoline or any fuel with as much as 85% ethanol.

"E15 will provide consumers and marketers another option to maximize their domestic renewable fuel use," said the groups in the statement. "But failing to adhere to the legal steps required to do so may give our fuel products and our industries an unnecessary and avoidable black eye."

The statement appears to be a response to press reports that gas stations started pushing sales of E15 to non-flex-fuel vehicles.

Earlier this month, the EPA said E15 could be sold to all 2007-future gasoline-powered cars and light trucks, and added that it would finish E15 testing on model-year 2001-06 vehicles in November.

"Thorough testing has now shown that E15 does not harm emissions control equipment in newer cars and light trucks," EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said in an Oct. 13 statement. "Wherever sound science and the law support steps to allow more home-grown fuels in America's vehicles, this administration takes those steps."

The RFA and other members of the ethanol industry had been lobbying Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency to approve E15 for use in all passenger vehicles across the nation. Almost all gasoline in the U.S. is now an E10 blend, the ethanol added as an oxygenator to help improve gasoline combustion.

Last month, ethanol advocates released a report saying that there was no apparent reason all post-1994 model-year cars and light trucks cannot use the higher blend, implying that E15 sales should be broadened beyond the approximately 7.5 million flex-fuel vehicles on North American roads (there are about 250 million U.S. registered vehicles total).

But a coalition of major automobile and motorcycle makers and manufacturers of gasoline-powered off-road products such as jet skis and emergency generators have opposed the idea, saying that the additional ethanol - an alcohol fuel - could damage metal, plastic and rubber parts in older vehicles' fuel systems and could harm non-automotive part that were not designed with ethanol in mind.

Environmental groups also have voiced strong opposition to the effort to increase use of ethanol, maintaining that production of the fuel - which is made from corn in the U.S. and from sugar cane in Brazil and other tropical countries - is environmentally damaging and can lead to a reduction in land devoted to growing food crops.

Now, such a conservative attitude appears to have rubbed off on even the ethanol lobbyists - at least for now.

"There are a cadre of regulations, standards, and labeling issues that must be addressed to allow retailers to legally offer E15 to those non-flexible-fuel vehicles the EPA has approved," said the statement from the PMAA and RFA.

"Until health-effects testing is completed, fuel producers have a 211(b) certification from EPA, certain state fuel regulations are amended, and EPA's misfueling and labeling proposed regulation is finalized, E15 sales must be confined to and labeled specifically for flexible-fuel vehicles only."

Scott Doggett:  is an AutoObserver.com Associate Editor.