The Clinton administration wants to move quickly to ensure that corn-based ethanol has a share of the market when new rules on smog-reducing gasoline take effect in 1995.
The administration, in a bid to help Midwestern farmers and promote renewable fuels, is expediting a regulation to require that 30 percent of the reformulated gasoline produced for the nation's smoggiest cities be made with ethanol products, administration officials said Tuesday.The administration has been grappling with how to achieve air quality requirements under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and boost ethanol's share of the reformulated gasoline market. Reformulated gasoline has added oxygen that makes the gas burn more cleanly.
When initial word of the Clinton plan emerged Tuesday, The Associated Press erroneously reported that Midwest farm interests had lost their effort to have ethanol included in the smog-reduction program. This was based on the administration's decision to finalize a smog-reducing gasoline regulation that producers say had the effect of keeping ethanol out of reformulated fuel.
That regulation does not dictate any type of fuel, but sets emission requirements for reformulated fuel.