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Corn leader praises Governors for supporting E15 all year
A farmer says the E15 letter to the EPA from eight Midwestern Governors is good news for corn growers.
Tom Gillis is a board member of the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association and is also on the National Corn Growers Association’s Ethanol Action Team (ETHAT). He tells Brownfield a stable year-round E15 market helps farmers. “It gives us options. You know, it makes the ethanol industry part of the corn growing process profitable. It makes the cattle feeding section profitable. They can feed the high-quality distillers grains from the ethanol process cheaper than whole corn, so it’s just a win-win all the way around.”
Gillis says the action by Governors in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas solves the year-round E15 access issues in those states, but a legislative fix is still needed for permanent nationwide year-round E15 access. “It’s just really getting into the weeds on the language of the EPA waiver for E10 now to go to E15. It’s just disappointing that the court ruled on an “and” instead of an “if” or, you know, a wordsmithing issue and it’s just going to be moving in the right direction to have the governors do this for the time being and we hope to get a legislative fix in the future.”
Gillis says the Next Generation Fuels Act authored by Illinois Congresswoman Cheri Bustos has around 22 co-sponsors and would change the entire federal motor vehicle fuels policy, allowing higher ethanol blends and encouraging auto manufacturers to develop more efficient high-compression engines.
