Following his analysis on the impact E15 would have on the air quality in Minnesota that was released by the Minnesota Bio-Fuels Association in February, Dr Steffen Mueller, Principal Research Economist at the University of Illinois at Chicago issued a letter last week assessing the impact making E15 the new regular would have on CO2e emissions in seven other states.

The seven other states covered under his new analysis are Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

According to Mueller the combined CO2e savings from switching to E15 from E10 in those seven states would amount to 3.41 million metric tons.

Combined with Minnesota (358,000 metric tons), total annual CO2e savings would be 3.76 million metric tons. This, according to the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Equvalencies calculator, is the same as removing 793,282 cars from the road a year.

The breakdown is detailed in the table below.

As the table above illustrates, the total CO2e savings from using E15 in comparison to using gasoline that isn't blended with ethanol is 10.98 million metric tons. And according to the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies calculator, that is the equivalent of removing 2.31 million cars a year.