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Posts with tag alaska-biofuel

Alaska and biodiesel hit the radio airwaves for Earth Day

Filed under: Biodiesel


Whether its being used in jets or up in Alaska, biodiesel's challenges as a cold-weather fuel are being tested. For Earth Day today, the Alaska Public Radio Network is featuring a five-minute piece on people using biodiesel and vegoil in The Last Frontier. Readers up in the Anchorage area can listen to KSKA 91.1FM at 11 am (local time) today and anyone can hear the piece on the APRN website or by downloading the MP3 directly.

In the piece, we hear how vegoil is used to heat a Juneau hotel. A $15,000 investment upgraded the heating system and it paid for itself in the first year. The description that follows of how to convert a diesel vehicle to run on vegoil isn't anything we haven't heard before, but I like to hear how, even in a state where everyone gets some money from the oil industry (via the Permanent Fund Dividend), people are looking past petroleum.

[Source: APRN]

Biofuels and road taxes, the Alaska edition

Filed under: Biodiesel, Vegetable Oil, Legislation and Policy



In many places around the world, roads are financed at least in part by a tax added to the price of fuel. When we head to the pumps, we pay for a little bit of the road we drive out onto as we leave the station. But people who make their own biofuels don't pay these taxes and yet they drive on roads other people pay for. To make sure the load is balanced out a bit, many governments tax biofuels whether they are home-brewed or purchased. To get an idea of how this plays out in Alaska, check out this post over at Arctic Vegwerks.

The system for collecting waste oil or biodiesel taxes ($0.08/gallon state and $0.244/gallon federal) in Alaska starts like this:

The user must submit their Alaska Motor Fuel Tax on a monthly basis. Yeah, the tax office would really prefer it wasn't so often, but it's written into law. Seems like they would lose money processing a whole bunch of $5 checks every month! Some states exempt the first 2500 gallons, and the feds only require quarterly taxes, so lobby your Alaska legislators if you want to improve the law!

Arctic Vegwerks goes on to describe just how to fill out the state paperwork and quotes parts of the law that affect some green drivers up north. Got any good stories of how it affects you where you live?

[Source: Arctic Vegwerks]

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