[SusDet Announce] [Fwd: Sun - no good fuel alternative goes unpunished]

[Ursa Minor]

Forwarded by Judith


No good fuel alternative goes unpunished

By Evan Halper
    May 9, 2008


Dave Eck, a Half Moon Bay, Calif., mechanic, had attracted a
media spotlight with his fleet of vehicles fueled by used
fryer grease from a local chowder house. So when Sacramento
called, he figured officials wanted advice on alternative fuels.

Not at all. The government rang to notify Eck that he was a
tax cheat.

He was scolded for failing to get a "diesel fuel supplier's
license," reporting quarterly how many gallons of grease he
burns and paying a tax on each gallon.

"All of a sudden they nailed me for a road tax," said Eck,
who drives a Hummer converted to run on vegetable oil. "I
said, 'Not a problem. I'll do my part. But what do I get? At
least let me into the carpool lane.'"

No such luck. The state offered Eck only a potentially large
fine - and not just for failing to pay taxes. He can also
get in trouble for carting kitchen grease away from eateries
without a license from the state Meat and Poultry Inspection
Branch.

Or for not having at least $1 million in liability
insurance, in case he spills some of the stuff. Or for not
getting permission from the state Air Resources Board to
burn fat in the first place.

The regulations are so burdensome that even California Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, trying to set an example for
Californians by driving a Hummer that burns cooking oil, has
not complied. Schwarzenegger, who has said that the exhaust
from his Hummer smells so much like french fries that his
passengers get hunger pangs, was unaware that he was
required to send Sacramento an 18-cent road tax for every
gallon of kitchen oil he burned, according to spokesman
Aaron McLear.

After the Los Angeles Times raised the issue, McLear said
the governor would pay the taxes he owed.

The governor's staff says it is working on making it easier
to drive using vegetable oil without being an outlaw.

"We are very interested in making sure people who have these
kinds of vehicles are able to comply as easily as possible,"
McLear said.

But environmentalists are frustrated.

"It is ridiculous that we live in what is presumed to be one
of the greenest states in the nation, yet we have the most
antiquated laws to deal with green energy," said Josh
Tickell, an alternative-fuels advocate and filmmaker whose
documentary Fields of Fuel recently won the audience award
at the Sundance Film Festival.

"Everyone I know wants to do the right thing by the law," he
said. "But the state is not set up to even clearly provide
information to folks."

The veggie oil crowd is hardly on the radical fringe
anymore. Garages report being overwhelmed with conversion
business, and restaurants throughout Southern California are
contending with raids on their used-grease tanks.

Advocates say more than 250,000 Americans are running their
vehicles on cooking oil, with the biggest concentration in
California. Drivers do it for different reasons: to protect
the environment, to reduce dependence on foreign oil or to
save money. Those using vegetable oil say they do so for as
little as $1 a gallon, even though grease yields better
mileage than gasoline and about the same as diesel fuel.

Almost all of them are doing it underground. The state tax
board has processed fewer than 70 of the required "fuel
supplier" licenses, according to a spokeswoman. Most of
those are for businesses selling commercial biodiesel, a
more mainstream fuel that is typically mixed with as much as
80 percent petroleum.

State agencies say they have reasons for doing things the
way they do.

Tax authorities say biofuel drivers need to pay for using
California's roads, just like everyone else, and there is no
simple way to collect from those who don't go to the gas
pumps, where road taxes are normally levied.

The meat and poultry agency is worried about toxic spills.
Officials with the air board are troubled by kitchen-grease
emissions, especially when spewed by vintage diesel
Mercedes-Benzes, the make of choice for many vegetable oil
converts.

Although most drivers burning kitchen oil have managed to
evade enforcement - government agencies say they have handed
out few citations - those who attract attention to
themselves by promoting the alternative fuel tend to hear
from regulators.

Craig Reece, owner of PlantDrive in Berkeley, which sells
kits to convert diesel engines to run on vegetable oil, said
he got a call from state officials about paying the road
tax. He has since been sending the tax forms to all his
customers, but he figures only a few are actually
registering with the state and keeping logs of how much oil
they burn.

"A lot of my customers think this fuel should be exempt from
taxes," he said. "They feel they ought to get something for
the climate-change-neutral aspect of it."

Illinois, North Carolina, Texas, Rhode Island and Indiana
have exempted drivers burning kitchen grease from paying
such a tax. In North Carolina, the move came at the behest
of a state senator who motors around in a small car powered
by soybean oil. The legislator said it wasn't paying the
taxes that bothered him so much as the hours required to do
the paperwork.

Terry Tamminen, an adviser to Schwarzenegger on energy and
environmental policy, acknowledged that California has been
slow to adapt.

"When you go through a period of change, there is always a
clunkiness to the bureaucracy," he said.

But he said the state should not overlook the value of
alternative-fuel pioneers.

"Our mentality is to look for the next silver bullet" to
replace petroleum, Tamminen said by telephone while driving
a car fueled by compressed natural gas. "But there is no
silver bullet, only buckshot. We are going to need every one
of these silver buckshots to be developed as best it can."

Evan Halper writes for the Los Angeles Times.

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