The “Nationwide Consumer and Fuel Retailer Choice Act" expands the ethanol mandate by 1) loosening air quality rules and 2) imposing the mandate on small refineries. This will raise fuel costs.
Ethanol has proven to be a poor alternative. The combined consequences of processing corn for alcohol and burning alcohol in automobiles has produced more by-products than straight up petroleum refining. Gasoline is better on its own.
The bill itself concedes your point. If ethanol's emissions profile were genuinely competitive, Congress wouldn't need to loosen the air quality rules that currently cap how much can be blended. The "Choice Act" name is doing a lot of work for a mandate that forces refiners to comply.
Brazilian drivers and my own wallet would disagree with the assertion that Ethanol is wasted as a motor fuel. My family has a fleet of four 2006 through 2013 vehicles. Three are over 100,000 miles and those three all have more than 100,000 miles put on them by my family. None of those vehicles get better fuel economy on standard 87 Octane E0 than they do on the 87 Octane E10 from the same fuel provider.
E15 became available in my town about a year ago. Since then I have converted one vehicle at a time over to E15 as its primary fuel. All of the vehicles have seen about a 10% increase in their fuel economy numbers since moving them over to E15. Given the 25% or more difference in price between E15 and E0 I will stick with E15.
No issues with the fuel system or engine timings have showed up either.
Now, small carbureted engines like lawn mowers definitely might have issues with E15 pump fuel. Though in my experience they don't like the E0 stuff either now. By mid 2015 E0 pump fuel was causing problems with the carburetors in every small engine I owned and that did not go through at least one quart a week. Given my yard size, that is difficult to do without deliberately wasting fuel. So I converted all of my yard equipment over to electric before 2019.
Ethanol might be a good fuel in other contexts. My understanding is that sugar is much better for making ethanol than corn is. Alex's point is fuel freedom - let the market determine the best fuel. To add insult to injury to sugar vs corn, the US used to have a 50 cent/gallon import tax on Brazilian ethanol. So it was clear that this wasn't about liking ethanol, it was all about more loot for corn farmers.
If you haven't seen the documentary "What killed The Electric Car?" you probable should. They spend a decent part of the documentary going over alternative fuels that got to the ready to ramp up stage where they were killed by regulators.
What is the best source of ethanol is a more interesting question than is ethanol a good automotive fuel? The easiest to ferment saccharides are glucose and fructose, sucrose contains both of them with an easy to split bond. We have develop enzyme pretreatments that help turn the larger polysaccharides into glucose and/or the smaller monosaccharides. Corn is the crop we have the most experience with in the United States but we could use other plants.
I am getting more and more convinced that tariffs to protect national supply chains are a good thing. Our local resiliency is in my opinion more important than global market efficiency.
"Advocates of expanding the ethanol mandate not only have the gall to pretend they are increasing freedom when they are reducing it, they are also pretending they will lower fuel prices when in fact expanding the ethanol mandate can only raise prices."
Ah yes, nothing like another government mandate to increase "freedom"! And the latter half of this pitch by the ethanol advocates sounds just like the marketing pitch of green energy advocates, which begs the obvious question: why does something that will supposedly lower prices need to be mandated/subsidized?
Worth pricing against the backdrop: gas crossed $4 the same day Trump announced the Iran exit. Stacking a corn surcharge onto a wartime fuel market is the kind of timing only a lobbyist could love. The mandate is the tell. Markets don't need cops at the checkout.
I clicked the "Tell your Rep. to vote no" button and duly created a letter. I clicked in the box with the letter and used Cntrl-A to select all the text.
When I pasted it into my Congress Critter's on-line letter receiver, I got the instructions above and below the text of my letter, making it very obvious this was an AI generated letter from Alex Epstein.
I edited those portions at the top and bottom out, but if you use this, be careful about using cntrl-A to select the letter text.
Subject: Your Ongoing Betrayal of Common Sense and American Freedom
I am writing to express my absolute and total disgust for the unamerican, illogical, and fundamentally corrupt policy initiatives you continue to push forward. It is an objective fact that your lobbying and political maneuvers do not serve the public interest. Instead, they represent a calculated effort to spend massive amounts of money to silence, hurt, and abuse large populations solely to satisfy your own insatiable lust for greed.
This country was founded on sacred, foundational ideals: individual liberty, free-market integrity, and basic common sense. True American values dictate that we champion transparency, respect the rights of everyday citizens, and foster a system where hard work—not backroom manipulation—determines success. Your initiatives stand in direct opposition to everything this nation is supposed to represent. You have chosen to weaponize financial influence to distort public policy, crush fair competition, and inflict economic and structural harm on regular people who are simply trying to live their lives.
When you strip away the polished public relations spin, the reality of what you are doing is completely indefensible. You are actively working to make life harder, more restrictive, and more expensive for millions of Americans just to line your own pockets and inflate your corporate bottom line. To use your wealth, access, and intellect to systematically undermine the well-being of entire communities for personal profit is a miserable, cowardly way to conduct a life. It is low, it is deceitful, and it is entirely devoid of basic human decency.
The people of this country deserve far better than special interest groups that sacrifice our freedoms and our future for their own financial gain. Your actions are a direct assault on the American ideals of liberty, honesty, and fair play. You should feel a profound, crushing sense of shame for the damage you are consciously causing to the fabric of this nation—though it is clear your greed has blinded you to even the most basic standard of morality.
Thank you so much Alex for doing this and making writing my congressman as palatable as possible. I have a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts so it should be a no brainer that he's against this.
It's funny, I read a lot of substacks from all over the political spectrum. The ethanol mandate is one of the few issues where the smart people on the left and right seem to completely agree that it's a bad idea!
I mean, on what other subject are Alex Epstein and Hannah Ritchie going to agree. Anything?
Ethanol has proven to be a poor alternative. The combined consequences of processing corn for alcohol and burning alcohol in automobiles has produced more by-products than straight up petroleum refining. Gasoline is better on its own.
The bill itself concedes your point. If ethanol's emissions profile were genuinely competitive, Congress wouldn't need to loosen the air quality rules that currently cap how much can be blended. The "Choice Act" name is doing a lot of work for a mandate that forces refiners to comply.
Brazilian drivers and my own wallet would disagree with the assertion that Ethanol is wasted as a motor fuel. My family has a fleet of four 2006 through 2013 vehicles. Three are over 100,000 miles and those three all have more than 100,000 miles put on them by my family. None of those vehicles get better fuel economy on standard 87 Octane E0 than they do on the 87 Octane E10 from the same fuel provider.
E15 became available in my town about a year ago. Since then I have converted one vehicle at a time over to E15 as its primary fuel. All of the vehicles have seen about a 10% increase in their fuel economy numbers since moving them over to E15. Given the 25% or more difference in price between E15 and E0 I will stick with E15.
No issues with the fuel system or engine timings have showed up either.
Now, small carbureted engines like lawn mowers definitely might have issues with E15 pump fuel. Though in my experience they don't like the E0 stuff either now. By mid 2015 E0 pump fuel was causing problems with the carburetors in every small engine I owned and that did not go through at least one quart a week. Given my yard size, that is difficult to do without deliberately wasting fuel. So I converted all of my yard equipment over to electric before 2019.
Ethanol might be a good fuel in other contexts. My understanding is that sugar is much better for making ethanol than corn is. Alex's point is fuel freedom - let the market determine the best fuel. To add insult to injury to sugar vs corn, the US used to have a 50 cent/gallon import tax on Brazilian ethanol. So it was clear that this wasn't about liking ethanol, it was all about more loot for corn farmers.
If you haven't seen the documentary "What killed The Electric Car?" you probable should. They spend a decent part of the documentary going over alternative fuels that got to the ready to ramp up stage where they were killed by regulators.
What is the best source of ethanol is a more interesting question than is ethanol a good automotive fuel? The easiest to ferment saccharides are glucose and fructose, sucrose contains both of them with an easy to split bond. We have develop enzyme pretreatments that help turn the larger polysaccharides into glucose and/or the smaller monosaccharides. Corn is the crop we have the most experience with in the United States but we could use other plants.
I am getting more and more convinced that tariffs to protect national supply chains are a good thing. Our local resiliency is in my opinion more important than global market efficiency.
"Advocates of expanding the ethanol mandate not only have the gall to pretend they are increasing freedom when they are reducing it, they are also pretending they will lower fuel prices when in fact expanding the ethanol mandate can only raise prices."
Ah yes, nothing like another government mandate to increase "freedom"! And the latter half of this pitch by the ethanol advocates sounds just like the marketing pitch of green energy advocates, which begs the obvious question: why does something that will supposedly lower prices need to be mandated/subsidized?
Worth pricing against the backdrop: gas crossed $4 the same day Trump announced the Iran exit. Stacking a corn surcharge onto a wartime fuel market is the kind of timing only a lobbyist could love. The mandate is the tell. Markets don't need cops at the checkout.
A warning or heads up to others...
I clicked the "Tell your Rep. to vote no" button and duly created a letter. I clicked in the box with the letter and used Cntrl-A to select all the text.
When I pasted it into my Congress Critter's on-line letter receiver, I got the instructions above and below the text of my letter, making it very obvious this was an AI generated letter from Alex Epstein.
I edited those portions at the top and bottom out, but if you use this, be careful about using cntrl-A to select the letter text.
Email these sleeve bags: jake@hystrategies.com, Aconlin@cssgr.com, dtibben@cssgr.com, cgorton@iowarfa.org, mshaw@iowarfa.org, amirgoulartscharif@gmail.com
My email, sent 06/06/2026:
Subject: Your Ongoing Betrayal of Common Sense and American Freedom
I am writing to express my absolute and total disgust for the unamerican, illogical, and fundamentally corrupt policy initiatives you continue to push forward. It is an objective fact that your lobbying and political maneuvers do not serve the public interest. Instead, they represent a calculated effort to spend massive amounts of money to silence, hurt, and abuse large populations solely to satisfy your own insatiable lust for greed.
This country was founded on sacred, foundational ideals: individual liberty, free-market integrity, and basic common sense. True American values dictate that we champion transparency, respect the rights of everyday citizens, and foster a system where hard work—not backroom manipulation—determines success. Your initiatives stand in direct opposition to everything this nation is supposed to represent. You have chosen to weaponize financial influence to distort public policy, crush fair competition, and inflict economic and structural harm on regular people who are simply trying to live their lives.
When you strip away the polished public relations spin, the reality of what you are doing is completely indefensible. You are actively working to make life harder, more restrictive, and more expensive for millions of Americans just to line your own pockets and inflate your corporate bottom line. To use your wealth, access, and intellect to systematically undermine the well-being of entire communities for personal profit is a miserable, cowardly way to conduct a life. It is low, it is deceitful, and it is entirely devoid of basic human decency.
The people of this country deserve far better than special interest groups that sacrifice our freedoms and our future for their own financial gain. Your actions are a direct assault on the American ideals of liberty, honesty, and fair play. You should feel a profound, crushing sense of shame for the damage you are consciously causing to the fabric of this nation—though it is clear your greed has blinded you to even the most basic standard of morality.
A Concerned American
I just tried AlexAI...holy cow! I love it!
Congress: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help [no, not you, but those that donate to my campaign like the ethanol lobby).”
Wow, passed but only by a small margin according to Gemini -
Yes, the House of Representatives voted on and passed the Nationwide Consumer and Fuel Retailer Choice Act (H.R. 1346) on Wednesday, May 13, 2026.
The bill passed with a bipartisan vote of 218 to 203. It now moves to the Senate for consideration.
Key Details of the Vote
• Bipartisan Support: The bill saw a notable cross-section of support, passing with 122 Republicans and 95 Democrats voting in favor.
Thanks Alex.
Thank you so much Alex for doing this and making writing my congressman as palatable as possible. I have a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts so it should be a no brainer that he's against this.
It's funny, I read a lot of substacks from all over the political spectrum. The ethanol mandate is one of the few issues where the smart people on the left and right seem to completely agree that it's a bad idea!
I mean, on what other subject are Alex Epstein and Hannah Ritchie going to agree. Anything?