E15 Summertime Access ‘Most Likely’ Part of Year-End Funding Bill: Johnson

Summertime access for E15 will likely be included in year-end negotiations to fund the federal government, a prominent member of the House of Representatives’ Biofuels Caucus told conference attendees last week, while noting that he sees “way better” odds for the carveout this year.

Speaking at the American Coalition for Ethanol’s conference in Sioux Falls on Thursday, Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota said he feels more confident than ever that summertime E15 access will make its way to the president’s desk — putting the measure’s odds for the session at “better than 70%.”

The carveout would end a long-running prohibition from the Clean Air Act on blending E15 during the summertime period spanning June 1 to Sept. 15. The EPA has waived the prohibition throughout that period for the past four summers, citing “extreme and unusual” factors weighing on fuel availability due to ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

While those waivers have seemingly become an annual occurrence, Johnson stressed that stakeholders would prefer a more certain outlook for their operations.

“We will not get widespread adoption as long as we continue to have relatively short-term extensions,” Johnson said, adding that “people need to know that their investment will come with a return.”

Johnson, who has introduced several bills that would offer summertime access to E15 since joining the legislature in 2019, said at the conference that “by far and away the most likely vehicle” for affirming that access permanently would be the year-end funding package.

“We do need to figure out what that train looks like,” Johnson noted.

“Maybe it is the year-end spending package, maybe it is the annual defense bill, but it is probably not the farm bill,” Johnson said, adding that the latter is at least, “theoretically possible.”

Legislators will have to finalize that package before Oct. 1 to avert a government shutdown.

Johnson does not expect that Congress will be able to finalize a deal by Sept. 30 and instead predicted a short-term extension and eventual passage “by Christmas.”

That package, whenever it is eventually passed, will likely have to align with the broader push for austerity in the legislature that the Trump administration has heralded thus far over this second term.

And while Johnson said that the year-end spending package will be the “most likely” train for E15 to ride to the White House, he also noted that lawmakers have recently looked into opportunities to attach the carveout to the annual defense bill.

“That [defense bill] is the best train, but the most likely is appropriations,” Johnson said.

Even if Congress is able to craft a year-end package small enough to pass the smell test from budget hawks in either chamber, it will face the even-greater threat of curtailment after passage through “pocket rescissions” — a tactic for canceling federal endowments through the executive branch that White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought has pledged to use in recent months.

A deal on E15 was included in an early version of last December’s year-end budget bill, but similar concerns over the size of that package led to the Senate excluding it later on in negotiations.

Johnson said the concerns that led to E15 being nixed from last year’s final funding bill were based on a “process complaint” — citing Elon Musk’s “relatively legitimate” public aversion to the size of the bill.

“But there were not real policy debates [on E15],” Johnson said.

ACE CEO Brian Jennings told OPIS last week that the decision to nix E15 from that package was “frustrating,” adding that the group was hopeful there would be more opportunities in the first half of this Congressional session to find passage.

But absent progress on that front, Jennings nonetheless said he believes there “is a critical mass of support that has coalesced around the need for [E15 access] from different interest groups, and, frankly, from different Republicans and Democrats.”

“Inside and outside of Congress, the coalition exists, and the will exists to get this done,” Jennings said. “So, it frankly falls more… to finding the right opportunity.”

Jennings went on to note that he agrees with Johnson’s view of the year-end funding bill, calling it the “highest value target” available this session.

Reporting by Patrick Newkumet, pnewkumet@opisnet.com; Editing by Jordan
Godwin, jgodwin@opisnet.com