Ethanol leaders will push E15, maritime fuel

ORLANDO — The ethanol industry is frustrated over the lack of action on a bill in the House to legalize E15 gasoline nationwide throughout the year, and will also urge President Trump to support an international agreement that would pave the way for ethanol to be used to fuel ships, according to officials here at the National Ethanol Conference.

Renewable Fuels Association President Geoff Cooper said at a news conference here that his members are “getting impatient” and are “frustrated and tired of waiting” for House Republicans to reach the agreement on E15 they promised after not advancing an E15 bill earlier.

“They are tired of commitments being made and not being honored,” Cooper added. Small refiners that he does not consider to be so small are “hanging this up” because they are using the situation “to wreak havoc on the Renewable Fuel Standard,” Cooper said.

While House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has spoken of moving the E15 bill as separate legislation, Cooper said it makes more sense to attach it to another bill. If Republicans cannot assemble enough votes to pass the measure by themselves, Democrats could help, but they would want to add provisions they want, Cooper added.

Separately, in a statement issued from Washington, Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor noted that the House Republicans’ Rural Domestic Energy Council had promised to strike a deal by Feb. 15 and to send the bill to the House floor no later than Wednesday, but both deadlines have passed.

“This is an urgent priority for rural America, and we’re grateful for the hard work by our champions on the council to keep this process moving forward,” Skor said. “But we need to get year-round E15 to the president’s desk in time to reignite the struggling farm economy and guarantee real savings at the pump this summer. We urge Speaker Johnson and his team to stand behind President Trump’s promise to quickly deliver year-round access to lower-cost, American-made E15.”

Cooper also said that RFA will try to convince Trump to support an international deal through the International Maritime Organization to curb shipping emissions that would ease the way for ships to use ethanol as a power source.

The IMO had expected to approve a plan to regulate the shipping industry’s contributions to climate change in October, but Trump torpedoed the deal, AlJazeera reported.

The IMO is expected to take up the proposal again this year, and Cooper said the RFA will engage with the Trump administration “to make sure they fully understand the opportunity for the U.S. industry and farmers.”

“If it had been formally adopted this week, the Net Zero Framework would have been the first global carbon-pricing system, charging ships a penalty of $380 per metric tonne on every extra tonne of CO2-equivalent they emit while rewarding vessels that reduce their emissions by using alternatives,” AlJazeera said when the IMO voted to delay adopting the framework after Trump threatened sanctions on countries that voted for it.

A panel of experts said Wednesday at the National Ethanol Conference that ethanol indeed has an opportunity to fuel ships, but only if the United States supports it.

Zoltán Szabó, secretary general of the Climate Ethanol Alliance, who chaired the panel, said he had watched delegates move from being sure the IMO would pass the agreement to turning “gloomy.”

“That was a sobering experience for me,” Szabó said. “Politics played a key role. Without U.S. support, we will not have that opportunity.”

Clarence Woo of the Global Centre for Green Fuels, a Singapore-based group, said he was not sure that officials at the U.S. embassy in Singapore understood the opportunity for U.S. ethanol producers.

Ernst Wilche of Everllence, a German engine manufacturer, said that since the IMO failed to act, shipping companies have pulled back their orders for dual-fuel engines, but he said they could still be retrofitted.

Wilche said that for shippers to adopt green biofuels, they must be the cheapest fuel. “Everything is about the money,” Wilche said. With the shippers, “it is not about going green. You need a regulation in place to make it more expensive not to be green.”

Another panel at the National Ethanol Conference discussed opportunities for exporting U.S. ethanol. Canada is the most important ethanol trading partner for the United States, but Fred Ghatala, president of Advanced Biofuels Canada, said that if Trump had not been elected and made negative comments about Canada, a conservative might have been elected prime minister of Canada and gotten rid of Canada’s low-carbon fuel standard.

Ghatala added that maintaining the low-carbon fuel standard is dependent on the support of Canada’s farm community. Ghatala also noted that Canadian provincial governments are strong and “we really like that web of policies” that come from the provinces.

Ed Hubbard, general counsel of the Renewable Fuels Association, said there are opportunities throughout the world to increase ethanol exports.

Another panel provided practical advice to the industry to comply with the 45Z tax credits, which are in place in proposed form for the 2025 tax year.