The North Carolina General Assembly has adjourned for this session, and last Thursday the legislators passed S1272: Motor Fuels Tax Exemption for Biodiesel, which removes the requirement to pay road tax on homebrew biodiesel. That’s awesome – a great incentive for homebrewers. Also, legislators changed the tax law to remove the $2000 bond for fuel providers who don’t have more than $2000 in fuel tax liabilities. That’s another step to boost small-scale, local fuel production in NC. I find it a bit puzzling that S1272 does not mention waste veg. oil fuel, though. Especially as this activity, to some degree, was kicked off by reports of an SVO user getting fined $1000 by the state for using un-taxed fuel. But at least the SVOers got the bond requirement removed. That bond was a huge obstacle.

A big thank-you from the biodiesel homebrewers goes to Senator John Snow who represents North Carolina’s 50th Senate District. Sen. Snow sponsored several biodiesel related bills in this session, including S1272. That bill also establishes a study commission to examine the tax implications of alternative fuels and how they should be addressed. The state does need to take a close look at the impact of exempting certain fuels from road tax, and how to deal with non-IC powered vehicles. With the emergence of “fuel diversity” on public highways, it might be a good idea to begin re-thinking the idea of tying road taxes to fuel consumption. It will get increasingly difficult to define “fuel” (think about solar- or flywheel-powered vehicles). Also, I think that we’ll see multi-fuel engines in vehicles in the next 10 years. While the tax-exemption is certainly the right thing to do, and should be expanded to encourage the use of other made-in-NC fuels, the state has a duty, and an interest, to stay on top of these issues.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 4th, 2007 at 10:16 am and is filed under Biodiesel, Celebrate!, North Carolina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.