Natural gas vehicles bill is amended and moving in House and Senate

Natural gas vehicles bill is amended and moving in House and Senate
Bruce Ritchie, 03/05/2013 - 04:09 PM

A bill that supporters say would encourage the conversion of commercial fleets to natural gas is
moving in both the House and Senate.

HB 579 passed the House Energy & Utilities Subcommittee on Tuesday by a 13-0 vote. The
bill would provide tax breaks of $2,500 to $4,000 per year for converting vehicles to natural gas,
said Rep. Lake Ray, R-Jacksonville.

Natural gas is cleaner to burn and domestically produced, reducing dependence on foreign oil, bill
supporters say. Many of the 32 natural gas refueling stations service only fleet vehicles, Ray said.

Converting fleets to natural gas will encourage the development of refueling stations that can also
serve the public. Nopetro built a natural gas refueling station in Tallahassee in 2012 to service
Leon County school buses and it is open to the public.

"There are some stations that are set up; long-term there will be more," he said. "This gives that
opportunity and that incentive for free enterprise to start to invest aggressively."

The committee substitute that passed Tuesday eliminated a proposal that would have created a
trust fund to pay for converting vehicles. The bill matches SB 560, which passed the Senate
Transportation Committee on Feb. 21 by a 9-0 vote.

The original legislation would have diverted $12 million a year for five years from taxes paid on
motor fuels, according to the Florida Natural Gas Association. That diversion apparently

not determined the fiscal impact of the bill.

Without the tax structure, freight haulers coming into the state won't have to pay taxes while using Florida's roads.

"If we sit and do nothing, we're going to get nothing," Ray said. "If we move we will incentivize somebody to make that future and to reach that future."

The bill passed with support from the Florida Natural Gas Association, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, UPS, Associated Industries of Florida, Peoples Gas and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Ray also said the legislation could help Florida manufacturing compete on a world market by reducing the carbon "footprint" associated with production and provided in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Although the United States never ratified the protocol, other countries that did are looking to buy products that are manufactured while producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions, Ray said.

"If you move your goods by natural gas you put a zero in that column of carbon emissions that are created as a result of that," he said. "So it doesn't matter where we are in that discussion (about climate change). … When we talk about so many products involved, it gives us a competitive advantage."