Opinion: America can’t afford year-round E15 fuel — Congress must reject it

By David Widawsky , director of World Resources Institute’s U.S. program

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As Congress debates proposals to allow the year-round sale of E15 gasoline — fuel blended with 15 percent corn ethanol rather than the common 10 percent blend — lawmakers are being told this is a simple win for consumers, farmers and energy security.

Unfortunately, evidence shows that is not the case.

In reality, “year-round E15” legislation would deepen an environmentally damaging and economically inefficient policy while increasing costs for American families already struggling with inflation.

And let’s be real, the proposal is not about energy independence. It is a back-door way to expand the domestic market for U.S. corn at consumers’ expense, after U.S. corn farmers and exports were shocked by the cancellation of more than 1 million tons of U.S. food aid (mostly corn) to countries with poor and undernourished children. Not to mention the catastrophic impacts to U.S. farmers as a result of the president’s tariff policies, which greatly reduced corn exports to China.

To be clear, farmers do need support in sustaining their livelihoods amid this tough policy environment. But this bill is not the answer.

The implications of the E15 proposal are enormous. If enacted, particularly alongside executive action supporting expanded ethanol mandates, the change could increase ethanol use by roughly 50 percent. That would require diverting corn production for food and feed on millions of acres into corn production for fuel, representing an area exceeding half the size of Indiana.

At a moment when the U.S. should be reducing pressure on land, water and food systems, Congress is instead considering doubling down on a policy rooted in outdated assumptions about climate and energy.

When Congress expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard in 2007, policymakers believed crop-based biofuels would help lower greenhouse gas emissions. But nearly two decades later, the science tells a different story.

A growing body of evidence now indicates that corn ethanol may generate emissions comparable to, or even worse than, gasoline once full lifecycle impacts are considered. The Environmental Protection Agency’s own Science Advisory Board concluded in 2023 that recent emissions estimates for corn ethanol exceed those of gasoline.

Producing ethanol requires substantial fossil fuel inputs, including fertilizer, processing energy and transportation. But the larger problem is land use: when crop production is diverted from the food supply into fuel production, forests and grasslands somewhere else get converted into new agricultural land to replace the lost food. That conversion releases massive stores of carbon into the atmosphere. Globally, the emissions from these land-use changes often outweigh the tailpipe emissions reductions ethanol is supposed to achieve.

Agricultural expansion is already the leading driver of global deforestation, habitat destruction and biodiversity loss on land. Expanding ethanol production would intensify those pressures while further straining water supplies and worsening fertilizer runoff that pollutes rivers, creates toxic algae blooms, and contributes to dead zones, like in the Gulf of Mexico.

Supporters of E15 often frame the issue as a cost-saving measure for consumers. But that claim also falls apart under scrutiny.

EPA analysis has estimated that even increases in biofuel mandates smaller than E15 could impose tens of billions of dollars in additional fuel and food costs over just a few years. Those costs ripple through the economy because corn used for fuel is corn not available for food, animal feed or exports. The result is higher grocery bills at a time Americans can least afford them.

Meanwhile, the financial benefits of ethanol expansion are often overstated and unevenly distributed. While ethanol demand has helped drive up farmland values — and rents — across the Corn Belt, much of that gain accrues not to working farmers but to absentee landowners and institutional investors. Most farmland in major ethanol-producing states is rented, and much of it is owned by people who do not farm.

Consumers, meanwhile, pay more both at the pump and at the supermarket.

Nor does expanded ethanol use meaningfully solve America’s long-term energy challenges. The U.S. is already the world’s largest oil producer. True energy resilience will come not from expanding dependence on land-intensive fuel systems, but from accelerating cleaner and more efficient transportation technologies that genuinely reduce emissions without driving up food prices or destroying ecosystems.

Congress faces a choice.

Lawmakers can continue subsidizing and expanding a policy at odds with climate science, conservation goals and consumer interests. Or they can acknowledge what the evidence now shows: Expanding crop-based biofuels is a costly detour from a smarter energy future and a poor option for offsetting the recent actions that have undermined U.S. corn exports.

Year-round E15 is not a climate solution. It is not an affordability solution. And it is not a serious long-term energy strategy. Both American farmers and consumers deserve a more serious strategy to protect their livelihoods and actually lower food and gas prices.

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