E15: Consumers and Planet Pay; Big Ag Benefits

Let’s be clear from the outset. E15 is a bad idea for drivers, eaters, and taxpayers. It’s also a terrible idea for the environment. It’s only on the table because it’s good for big landowners in the Corn Belt who want higher prices for their corn, the primary source of ethanol. Congress should resist the political pressure to expand the E15 mandate year-round. 

So what is E15, and why is it such a bad idea overall? 

What’s actually being proposed 

E15 is gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol, up from the 10 percent (E10) blend sold nationwide today. Right now E15 can’t legally be sold in the summer in most of the country, because burning it in hot weather increases ozone formation — a core ingredient of smog — and thus the Clean Air Act prohibits its production and use in the summer. The House passed legislation in May to override that Clean Air Act protection and let E15 be sold year-round, Trump is pressing for Congress to do the same. And as of August, year-round E15 is in the draft Senate Farm Bill.  

Why this push for year-round E15?  Landowners want to expand the ethanol mandate because right now, the market just cannot take more ethanol. Virtually all gasoline sold in the US already contains 10% ethanol — the current legal limit. Rather than reduce ethanol production — a logical solution to declining demand and a saturated market — instead the corn growers want to authorize the higher blend to increase demand for ethanol such that ethanol use could expand roughly 50 percent.  The market itself is not asking for more ethanol: that’s why corn growers want it to be mandated. While E15 might be good for them and their profits, it’s bad for the rest of us. 

Drivers pay more, not less 

While E15 looks cheaper at the pump, the savings are illusory. Ethanol carries about a third less energy than gasoline, so E15 delivers worse mileage. This means drivers have to fill up more often to go the same distance. Once you adjust for that lower energy content, wholesale ethanol has actually been significantly more expensive than gasoline for almost all of the past 15 years. And more than 95 percent of U.S. gas stations don’t currently sell E15, because the pumps and tanks need upgrades to handle a more corrosive fuel — at an average cost of $108,000 per station and potentially much more. Those upgrade costs will also affect consumer prices. And these costs add up fast. In fact, EPA’s own modeling of a more modest biofuel increase found roughly $24 billion in additional fuel costs over just three years.  

Eaters pay more too 

EPA’s modeling also found roughly $17 billion in higher food costs from increased biofuel production. Corn grown for fuel is corn largely taken out of the supply that would otherwise be available for feed and food. This diminished supply increases corn prices by up to 30%,  which then work their way into prices for production of meat, dairy, poultry, and anything else that runs through the corn supply chain, and ultimately increases consumer food prices. This isn’t a hypothetical — it’s the same dynamic that shows up whenever the mandate is expanded, because the corn market is one market, whether the buyer is a feedlot or an ethanol refiner. 

The climate and environment also pay a steep price 

A 50 percent jump in ethanol demand would require dedicating nearly 13 million more acres to growing corn — an area bigger than half of Indiana. That’s on top of the roughly 50 million acres already used for growing corn and soy for biofuel, an area the size of Illinois and Indiana combined. When cropland expands to grow more fuel, it typically comes at the expense of grasslands and forests — land that would otherwise be storing carbon or growing food. That land-use change is why EPA’s own Science Advisory Board concluded in 2023 that recent estimates put corn ethanol’s climate emissions above gasoline’s, not below it — the opposite of what biofuels were intended to achieve. Beyond climate, the added acreage means more fertilizer and pesticide runoff, more strain on water supplies, and more habitat lost to row crops. 

Rural communities pay significant toxic health costs 

Expanding E15 production would also lead to significant public health costs, borne most acutely by rural Midwestern communities located near ethanol plants. A 2024 report found that biofuel manufacturing plants release significantly greater amounts of certain hazardous air pollutants linked to cancer, respiratory illness, and neurological damage than oil refineries. In states like Iowa and Illinois, about 70 percent of all reported hazardous air pollutants come from ethanol plants. Children, seniors, individuals with asthma or heart disease, and residents living downwind of large ethanol refineries, could face the greatest health burdens as increased demand for E15 drives further expansion of biofuel production. 

Follow the money 

So with all of these significant costs from E15 expansion, who benefits? Rising corn prices show up quickly in land values and rents — a 2026 study attributes to the ethanol boom a 44 to 70 percent increase in farmland values in the most productive Corn Belt counties. But most of Corn Belt farmland is leased, and over 85 percent of those landlords do not operate the farmland themselves. That means most of the financial upside from a mandated E15 expansion flows to investors holding land, not to the farmers working it. Year-round E15 is, in that sense, a transfer of money from drivers and grocery shoppers to landlords, all masquerading as energy policy. 

A far better path already exists 

Congress doesn’t need more corn ethanol to deliver affordable, low-carbon transportation — it already has a far more efficient tool on hand. An hectare of solar panels charging electric vehicles delivers roughly 200 to 300 times as much mobility as a hectare of corn grown for ethanol; even a conservative estimate still finds solar roughly 70 times more land-efficient.  Given the prevalence of electric vehicles, which are now common and inexpensive, solar is far cheaper, faster, and cleaner than ethanol.  

Yet the same administration pushing year-round E15 is simultaneously working against solar. USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced last year that USDA would stop funding solar on farmland, and more recently halted grant applications altogether under the Rural Energy for America Program. USDA has even attacked states for supporting solar. 

What Congress should do 

Nothing about the case for year-round E15 adds up.  It raises costs at the pump and in the grocery aisle, it requires millions of additional acres of land that make the climate problem worse rather than better, and its financial benefits concentrate in land values for a few rather than real farmer income. Congress doesn’t need to guess at the tradeoffs here — EPA has already run them, and they point in the other direction: toward solar and electric vehicles, which deliver more mobility per acre, less pollution, and no need to raid the corn supply. Congress should reject year-round E15, protect Clean Air Act protections that keep summer smog in check, and support — rather than fight — the solar development that actually solves the affordability and climate problem E15 claims to address.