Ethanol groups submit comments on flex fuel vehicles

Ethanol Groups this week submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency regarding emissions standard compliance calculations for Flex Fuel vehicles.

The Renewable Fuels Association supports the EPA approach to “maintaining some level of certainty for automakers in the absence of future guidance.” RFA also called on the EPA to provide a long-term floor and “more robust” E85 usage factors for future model years, given expected growth and the benefits provided by ethanol flex fuels.

RFA Vice President for Regulatory Affairs states, “it is clear that manufacturers will hesitate to invest in certain technologies, like FFVs, unless there is some assurance that those vehicles technologies will help enable CAFE and GHG standard compliance over multiple model years.”

Growth Energy’s comments to EPA state recent trends in government and private investment in biofuels infrastructure, and updated data on E85 availability all lead to growth in higher biofuel blends. Growth Energy says the EPA should “provide appropriate, immediate credit to automakers to continue to produce flex-fuel vehicles to run on these higher biofuel blends.”