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Dinneen wants 15 percent waiver for all cars
Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen has bigger things to worry about other than the length of time that the Environmental Protection Agency is taking to consider whether to expand the ethanol blend wall to 15 percent. What concerns Dinneen is that the regulatory agency is considering requesting the waiver only for 2001 and newer cars.
“They are going to steal defeat from the jaws of victory,” Dinneen told Brownfield in Washington, D.C., this week. “They’ll make an announcement sometime over the course of the summer allowing consumers finally to use E15, but do it in a way that no gasoline marketer is ever going to move forward with it because they are not going to want to sell fuel to only half of the marketplace.”
Dinneen says the EPA has no data to support that consideration. He says the agency needs to grant the waiver, but they need to it correctly in a way supported by science.
AUDIO: Bob Dinneen (4 min. MP3)
Tags: EPA, Ethanol, Renewable Fuels
May be there is another smoking gun, some vehicles are prone to fail.
CRC study #E-87-1 that was issued last summer is most likely the precursor to the two ongoing studies being done currently for the EPA. CRC in general, is primarily funded by big oil and the auto industry. This study was very upfront in that they wanted to show higher temps in certain vehicles with higher blends of ethanol.
I my opinion, if EPA ties E15 to a certain model year then very little market impact for ethanol will be seen since most retailer are not going to give up tank space for E15 and not offer E10 to older vehicles. I also would argue that if the testing and summary of current testing is similar to this CRC study, then the EPA is overlooking the larger issue at hand. That is certain model vehicles are more prone to catalysis failure then others no matter what fuel blend is in the tank.
The highest temp vehicle on the list in this study is also the same type and model vehicle that had the catalysis failure in the Australian study. This vehicle only saw a 2 degree temp increase with fuel E10 to E15. The top 6 vehicles are 4 cylinders engine, smaller vehicle engines can tend to run hotter exhaust temps but the control of this is set by the computer strategy and weight ratio. The average of the top 6 vehicles for highest temp only saw 2.7 degree increase from E10 to E15 yet the average is some 200 degrees higher than some similar models at the bottom.
If the EPA ties a year restriction to E15 allowance then the much bigger issue or say smoking gun is that EPA needs to address certain models prone to fail.