Executive Summary

The Environmental Protection Agency is poised to release its draft rule for mandated volumes of biofuels for 2014. Earlier this year, EPA indicated that it understood that a limited demand for biofuels, particularly for ethanol, conflicts with the scheduled mandated volumes written in the law. To date, mandates for ethanol have been met with a gasoline blend that contains no more than 10 percent ethanol, referred to as E10. However, mandated volumes for ethanol are scheduled to exceed 10 percent of total gasoline consumption so new marketing channels will need to be developed to meet expanded mandates. Thus, the so-called E10 blend wall presents a real challenge to EPA.