by Dan Burns

Feb 21, 2026, 3:00 PM

Year-round E15 is the dumbest idea

There is an ongoing effort to start allowing sales of E15 – that is, gasoline mixed with up to 15% ethanol – year round, instead of only during the cooler months as is usually, currently the case. This is a hideous idea as it would mean more polluting emissions and more use of ethanol fuel. From an essay subtitled, with absolute accuracy, “The worst natural resource decision in American history:”

But let’s not stop there. Let’s say we required American automakers to meet European Union mileage standards. Here’s where I have to use the metric system. In 2019, average fuel economy in the E.U. was 5.95 L/100 km. In the U.S., it was 8.7 L/100 km. Lowering the U.S. value to the E.U. value would reduce liquid fuel consumption in the U.S. by 39 billion gallons, four times the benefit provided by corn ethanol (lines 10 and 11 below). And, importantly, it would do this without all the externalities (bad consequences) of fuel ethanol: water pollution, habitat loss, rural decay because of mono-cropping, pesticide use and so forth. The taxpayer and the public at large shoulders the burden for all this stuff, not the ethanol industry…

So, why do the titans insist on continuing with ethanol when it makes literally no sense? Because they don’t give a shit about you. Every step in the corn ethanol process, i.e., selling seed, equipment, fuel (ironically, fossil fuel), fertilizer, chemicals, crop consulting, crop insurance, grain drying, grain transport, ethanol production, ethanol transport, and so on and so on involves the exchange of money with literally no responsibility or accountability for the negative environmental and societal consequences.
(The Swine Republic)

This has run into (apparently unanticipated by its backers) trouble in Congress. Like me, Big Oil is opposed to ethanol fuel, though their reasons have nothing to do with the environment and climate. I suspect their machinations are a big factor in what’s going on. But year-round E15 could still happen.

Farm policy should be grounded in phasing out both ethanol fuel and all other environmentally destructive (including climate changing) overproduction in general. Farmers can be compensated with big increases in CRP eligibility and payment amounts, and Big Ag can go suck it. None of that looks at all likely to happen any time soon.