Denver and Northeastern Colorado so far has dodged a huge jump in gasoline prices since the Environmental Protection Agency imposed a reformulated gasoline mandate for metro Denver resulting from the region’s failure to meet federal air quality standards.
The reformulated gas mandate began on June 1.
According to AAA, in both Denver and statewide, the average price for regular gasoline today is $0.39 cheaper than it was a year ago. It is $1.50 cheaper than Denver’s all-time high in June 2022 of $4.88 and also $1.55 cheaper than the statewide high of $4.92.
The requirement for the less-volatile gasoline that is supposed to reduce the emission of volatile organic compounds that contribute to the area’s ozone problems on hot, sunny days stems from failure of the Denver Metro-North Front Range Ozone Non-Attainment Area to meet the Clean Air Act’s summer ozone standards in the recent past.
EPA downgraded the air quality rating from “serious” in January 2020 to “severe” in November 2022, triggering the June 2024 requirement for the more expensive fuel blend.
Industry representatives and others had warned of the logistics and costs for delivering the new blend to suppliers in the zone, and in a press briefing with the Gazette editorial board in March, Gov. Jared Polis castigated the EPA on its decision to mandate the change to the more expensive gas.
“Oh, they’re awful, awful, awful, awful,” Polis said. “Yes, we’re fighting them on many fronts, but particularly now, with several exclamation points, this insane requirement for this reformulated gas.”
Polis sent the EPA a letter April 4 asking for an RFG waiver, citing another request for an extension in the RFG deadline he sent EPA in September 2022, arguing that “the bold actions Colorado has taken, and continues to take, to reduce emissions from the transportation sector and move away from fossil fuels have negated any potential emissions or environmental benefit from the costly and harmful RFG mandate.”
Former governor and now U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper had sent a letter to the EPA in June 2018 requesting a year’s extension to meet the ozone standards to see if the measures already taken by Colorado would bring the state out of the “marginal” classification imposed in July 2016 into compliance, something the EPA has the power to do. The EPA concurred with Hickenlooper’s request in July 2018.
Shortly after his election in 2019, Polis sent a letter asking the EPA to withdraw the request sent by Hickenlooper. In rescinding Hickenlooper’s request, Polis wrote, “We believe that the interests of our citizens are best served by moving aggressively forward and without delay in our efforts to reduce ground level ozone concentrations in the Denver Metro/North Front Range non-attainment area.”
EPA reduced the allowable ozone limit from 75 parts per billion in 2008 to 70 ppb in 2015, and a court decision left the state trying to meet both standards at slightly different times. When he sent the letter, Polis claimed that the state wouldn’t meet the 2015 70 ppb standard if granted attainment for the 2008 75 ppb standard. The governor’s office also recently insisted that the Hickenlooper waiver wouldn’t have any impact on the “severe” designation or the RFG requirement.
“The waiver requested by the Hickenlooper administration and the waiver requested by Governor Polis to help save Coloradans money have nothing to do with each other,” said Shelby Weiman, press secretary for Polis in an email to The Denver Gazette. “All areas designated as severe ozone non-attainment are required to supply reformulated gasoline, regardless of whether the previous Hickenlooper waiver had been continuously granted or not.”
But it’s unclear whether the state could have staved-off the “severe” designation if given another year for ozone reduction efforts to show progress.
From the point of view of the Governor’s Office, the air quality benefits of RFG are low and the money spent on the new formulation are better spent on things like electric vehicles and that the RFG mandate is detrimental to the state’s ongoing initiatives.
“Governor Polis is thrilled that Colorado gas prices remain below the national average,” Weiman said. “The Governor is happy that Coloradans have not seen an extreme price spike at the pump, but that does not change the fact that RFG could raise prices without providing Colorado with major air quality improvements. Governor Polis continues to advocate for a waiver to remove the risk for Coloradans to ensure we continue to save money at the pump and better protect our air quality.”