Sponsors (2)
The bill leans on lifecycle modeling to recognize ethanol’s carbon benefits and ease automaker compliance for flexible-fuel vehicles, but it risks overstating real-world air-quality gains, driving corn-driven economic costs, and rushing regulatory changes that create uncertainty.
Drivers and consumers: recognizing that E85 (average corn-starch ethanol) reduces lifecycle greenhouse gases per mile (reported ~37%) could support policies that lower transportation-sector emissions.
Vehicle manufacturers and consumers: allowing flexible-fuel vehicles (FFVs) to count as 31% lower in CO for fleet-average calculations makes it easier for automakers to meet standards and could incentivize more FFV production, potentially expanding consumer choice.
Researchers, national labs, and regulators: the bill highlights and validates the Argonne GREET lifecycle model and explicitly permits the EPA to adopt larger CO reductions if supported by updated GREET modeling, strengthening the scientific basis for fuel lifecycle analysis and allowing standards to reflect improved science over time.
Children, seniors and local communities: treating FFVs as 31% lower in CO on paper risks overstating real-world emission reductions, which could weaken actual air quality improvements and harm respiratory health.
Low-income households, farmers, and taxpayers: relying on a single lifecycle estimate to promote E85 could be used to justify expanded biofuel mandates or subsidies that raise corn demand, increase food prices, and boost government spending.
State governments, nonprofits, and other stakeholders: the 120-day deadline for the EPA to revise regulations risks rushed rulemaking, reduced stakeholder input, and diminished technical review.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Requires EPA to allow automakers to count flexible-fuel vehicle versions as having CO emissions 31% lower than non-flexible versions for fleet-average CO standards, with possible larger reductions if future GREET data support them.
Introduced July 15, 2025 by Amy Klobuchar · Last progress July 15, 2025
Requires the EPA to change its vehicle emissions regulation so automakers can treat flexible-fuel versions of a model as having 31% lower carbon monoxide (CO) gram-per-mile values than the non-flexible version when calculating fleet-average CO standards, with the EPA allowed to set a larger reduction if a later Argonne GREET model justifies it. The law cites an Argonne GREET finding that E85 with average corn-starch ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions per mile by 37% compared with gasoline without ethanol and defines key terms used in the Act.