Senate eyes standalone year‑round E15 bill; USDA to move 3,000 rural jobs to regional hubs

Year-round sales of E15 successfully passed through the House after being separated from the Farm Bill, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune is now working across the aisle to move it forward. Growth Energy CEO Emily Score with an update on year-round E15 sales and what lies ahead in the Senate,

‘He's focusing on a standalone bill, which would require 60 Senate votes. And they've looked at the House bill that passed. Initially, this was coupled with the farm bill in the House. The House decoupled it. They passed a farm bill, and they passed an E15 bill separately. What the Senate has said is, we see your House bill, but we want to do something different. We want to kind of do it our own way, similar contours, but our own version; they're working on that. We have not seen legislative text. I know what they're really trying to do is calibrate these negotiations. They understand what the ethanol industry and the corn growers need and want. They're trying to figure out how do we satisfy as many refineries as we can in kind of this compromise legislation. So he's working on a standalone so that he could move it expeditiously. Having said that, I think it's increasingly more likely that this is something of a bigger package at the end of the year.”

Emily Score with Growth Energy, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is moving ahead with a plan to relocate nearly 3000 rural development employees from Washington D.C. to regional hubs around the country. USDA says the restructuring is designed to reduce bureaucracy and place employees closer to the rural communities they serve