The Biden administration on Friday set new requirements that increase the amount of ethanol that must be blended into the nation's gasoline supply but reduce previous ethanol-blending requirements due to a plunge in fuel demand during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it would set the 2022 levels for corn-based ethanol blended into gasoline at 15 billion gallons. But even as the new rules increased future ethanol requirements, the EPA retroactively reduced levels for 2020 by 2.5 billion gallons and by 1.2 billion gallons for 2021, reflecting the lower amount of ethanol produced and decreased sales of gasoline during a period when the virus led to a drop in driving.
