SAE Update - February 2023 - 4

COmmEnTAry
Higher ethanol blends support the
transition to a low-carbon future
* Increasing motor gasoline
ethanol content to 20% would
help enable the new clean
octane standard required in the
Next Generation Fuels Act,
improving efficiency of future
vehicles designed to fully take
advantage of higher-octane fuel
* Ethanol blends produce fewer
particulate emissions, and
added ethanol also reduces
gasoline's most toxic
components and further
reduces sulfur levels that
impair emissions control
function, thereby providing
immediate air quality benefits
* Biofuel blending supports the
rural U.S. economy; In 2021,
the U.S. ethanol industry
supported over 407,000 jobs
* Higher ethanol blends provide
consumer price relief at the
pump. In summer 2022, E15
saved drivers nationwide an
average of 16 cents per gallon
compared to regular E10,
according to Growth Energy.
When calculating GHG savings
from various technologies, it is
imperative to use a full lifecycle
analysis which considers not just
the vehicle's tailpipe emissions of
GHG, but also the upstream
sources such as oil extraction
and refining, mining, farming,
4 February 2023
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200
20
40
60
80
2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034 2035
Year
FIGURE 2: Assumed number of vehicles fueled with E20 and E25 for GHG
analysis.2
manufacturing, and distribution. The DOE's Argonne
National Laboratory developed the GREET
(Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy
use in Technologies) model for lifecycle analysis, and
it is used by many experts to assess GHG emissions.
GREET was employed to estimate the GHG benefits
of the NGFA combined with an E20 waiver, and
Steffen Mueller and I presented those results at the
2021 SAE Fuels and Lubricants Meeting. The analysis
revealed substantial immediate GHG savings-
hundreds of millions of tonnes in only a decade.
Figure 2 illustrates the notional NGFA/E20 waiver
scenario, showing the shrinking legacy fleet as electric
vehicles and high-octane fuel (HOF) vehicles take
over. Even with several conservative assumptions, in
only 10 years the U.S. fleet could deploy over 130
million HOF vehicles using clean, high-octane fuel.
These more efficient vehicles will use lower-carbon
fuel for decades, continuing to provide GHG
reductions that would not be realized with
conventional regular gasoline.
The cumulative GHG savings of this scenario would
UPDATE
n Legacy Vehicles Using E20
n New HOF E20 Vehicles
n New HOF E25 Vehicles
Vehicles fueled with E20/E25 (millions)
Half of Legacy Fleet

https://www.sae.org/servlets/techSession?EVT_NAME=FFLP4&GROUP_CD=TSESS&SCHED_NUM=330926&tab=sessionDetails&REQUEST_TYPE=SESSION_DETAILS https://growthenergy.org/2022/10/17/study-access-to-e15-fuel-would-save-drivers-over-20-billion-in-annual-fuel-costs/

SAE Update - February 2023

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