EPA Denies Texas’ Request on Alternate Fuels

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that the agency was denying a request by the state of Texas to cut the amount of ethanol required in U.S. gasoline supplies by 50% over the next year.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said he was denying the waiver request because it did not meet the criteria in the law.

In order to grant the request, the mandate to use 9 billion gallons of ethanol in the next year would have to cause “severe harm” to the economy or the environment, something Johnson said EPA found it would not do.

The required total volume of renewable fuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, mandated by law to be blended into the fuel supply will remain at 9 billion gallons in 2008 and 11.1 billion gallons in 2009, EPA said.