E15 gasoline will be available to U.S. drivers nationwide starting May 1 to address potential disruptions in fuel supply, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin said Wednesday at the annual CERAWeek conference in Houston.
The waiver will be in place from May 1-20, the maximum allowable length under the Clean Air Act, and could be extended for another 20-day period, if conditions warrant. The EPA has issued similar waivers every year since 2022 to address summertime gasoline prices. The EPA will also “remove all federal impediments” to selling E10 gasoline and waive federal enforcement of state-level “boutique” gasoline requirements, allowing gasoline to be sold with blends between 9% and 15%, Zeldin said.
Most gasoline available at U.S. pumps today is E10, or gasoline blended with up to 10% ethanol. E15 is gasoline blended with up to 15% ethanol. It is approved by the EPA for use in flexible-fuel vehicles, and all vehicles in model year 2001 and newer, although its consumer availability is far more limited. (Just 2%-3% of U.S. gasoline stations sell E15 today.) But E15’s use is prohibited in motorcycles, vehicles with heavy-duty engines, off-road vehicles, equipment engines and conventional vehicles older than model year 2001.
Zeldin also said that E10 and E15 gasoline will need to meet a less-restrictive 10-Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) threshold during the waiver period. (RVP is a measure of gasoline’s volatility — the higher the RVP, the more easily it evaporates at a given temperature. Summer gasoline requires a lower RVP to limit emissions in hot weather. But winter gasoline runs higher RVP to help engines start in the cold.) When the EPA pulled the summertime RVP waiver for E10 in eight states in 2025, it essentially placed E10 and E15 on the same footing, requiring both to meet the 9-RVP limit. The EPA waiver announced Wednesday means that both fuels must meet only the 10-RVP limit during the waiver period.
Zeldin said gasoline announcements were made well ahead of their effective date to give refiners and other stakeholders as much time as possible to prepare.
As we noted recently in Growing Sideways, refining and fuel groups have been urging the EPA not to repeat last year’s late-breaking fuel rule changes and to show restraint in granting summer waivers, warning that last-minute decisions can create major operational headaches for refiners and retailers and raise costs or even risk regional supply issues for consumers.
