Biden looks to boost ethanol to lower gas prices

The Biden Manager said Tuesday it plans to help boost production and sales of ethanol-blended gasoline to ease pump pain like Inflation soars.

President Joe Biden will announce that the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue an emergency waiver that will suspend the summer ban on the use of a specific blended fuel, officials said. Senior administration officials told reporters on a call.

Biden will make the announcement during a visit to a bioremediation plant in Menlo, Iowa, a state that produces a significant portion of the country’s ethanol.

At current prices, the administration’s move would reduce prices by about 10 cents a gallon at 2,300 gas stations in the country that supply ethanol-blended fuel, the White House said.

The average price of gasoline has skyrocketed over $4 a gallon in recent weeks, with the administration largely pointing the finger at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. Biden announced plans late last month to release about 1 million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic oil reserves for six months to curb the rise in the price of what he called a “wartime bridge.”

Tuesday’s announcement came just hours before the Labor Department released new inflation figures. White House press secretary Jen Psaki warned Monday that Consumer price index for March may be “unusual increase.” In February, consumer prices rose 7.9% year-on-year, partly due to higher gas prices.

“Since President Putin’s military build-up accelerated in January, the average gas price has increased by more than 80 cents. Most of the increase occurred in March, and at one point gas prices were a dollar higher than pre-invasion levels,” Psaki told reporters. “Certainly this data will serve as a reminder that something needs to be done and to take additional steps.”

The emergency exemption will apply to what is known as E15, which is 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline. In previous summers, sales of E15 were banned in most countries during the summer because of EPA restrictions on gasoline-related air pollution.

The announcement will likely please some Republicans and Democrats in the Midwest. A bipartisan group of senators led by John Thune, RS.D., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., recently, urge Biden allows the sale of E15 fuel year-round to help reduce fuel costs for consumers.

However, the exemption also has the potential to raise air quality concerns. A peer-reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences has been published report in February, found that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the Renewable Fuels Standard is “no less than gasoline and possibly at least 24% higher.”

However, an Argonne National Laboratory learn published last year showed that using corn-based ethanol instead of gasoline reduced the lifetime of greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 40%, senior administration officials told reporters, adding adds that the agency’s own analysis does not indicate that emergency abandonment can harm air quality.

An official told reporters: “The focus here is also on ensuring that we are responding to a short-term energy supply emergency and doing so by leveraging home-grown fuels. garden.

Molly Rocker contribute.

at Blogtuan.info – Source: nbcnews.com – Read the original article here