Is E15 gasoline cheaper than other gasolines?
A ban on E15 gasoline in the summer will be lifted, potentially providing relief for American car drivers. How will the policy affect environmental targets?
Last Thursday’s announcement of the lifting of the summer E15 gasoline ban is expected to decrease the price of fuel in the summer months, despite its inferior quality and negative effect on the environment.
The Biden administration estimates that “E15 is about 10 cents a gallon cheaper than E10.” The President understands that this won’t amount to much, but “Even if it’s an extra buck or two in the pockets when they fill up, it’ll make a difference in people’s lives,” he said during his speech in Iowa to annouce the new measure.
In the summertime the sale of E15 gas is prohibited due to its effect on worsening air quality. Although ethanol and ethanol-gasoline mixtures have higher octane levels and burn cleaner than unblended gasoline, they also evaporate faster. E15 fuel creates a smog that is harmful to people and the environment. That is why the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the summer ban. However, with this being waved expect declining air quality in big cities in the hot summer months.
What about climate change targets?
The announcement of the lifting of the summer E15 ban has been swiftly followed by a further announcement that oil and gas would once more be developed on federal land. The US declared that further releases of oil and gas reserves would be needed to counter the cost of living crisis that is affecting US families.
In February 2020, President Joe Biden told an audience, “And by the way — no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”
With crucial mid-term elections upcoming in November, Democrats are seeing potential support ebb away as inflation has struck Americans in droves. However, the move to access more drilling sites has angered environmental groups.
“The Biden administration’s claim that it must hold these lease sales is pure fiction and a reckless failure of climate leadership,” said Randi Spivak, public lands director for Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s as if they’re ignoring the horror of firestorms, floods and megadroughts, and accepting climate catastrophes as business as usual.”
The latest climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believes that many of the effects of climate change are now “irreversible” and that 40 per cent of the world’s population are “highly vulnerable to these changes. President Biden’s new plans for oil and gas are likely to speed up the making of “certain parts of the world... uninhabitable.”