Texas Amends Code to Facilitate State Fleet Transition to Alternative Fuel Vehicles
The US state of Texas has passed House Bill 432 that addresses limitations in previous legislation, to remove financial disincentives to purchasing alternative fuel vehicles and clarify government requirements for state fleets. The bill, which becomes law on September 1, 2009, amends the Government Code to provide that purchasing requirements relating to state agency purchases of alternatively fueled vehicles do not apply if an agency demonstrates that it will incur net costs in meeting those requirements. It also amends provisions to specify that such vehicles must use alternative fuels, rather than just be capable of using alternative fuels, and to specify that a vehicle meets the use requirement if it uses an alternative fuel not less than 80 percent of the time it is driven.
The bill sets a new deadline, September 20, 2010, for agencies that operate a fleet of more than 15 motor vehicles, excluding law enforcement and emergency vehicles, to have a fleet in which at least 50 percent of the vehicles use alternative fuels.
It transfers from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to the comptroller of public accounts the power to reduce or waive these requirements.
The bill applies certain low emissions vehicle purchasing requirements not just to a state agency that purchases 10 or more vehicles in a state fiscal biennium, as under previous law, but to any agency that is authorized to purchase passenger vehicles or other ground transportation vehicles for general use. It increases, from 10 to 25 percent, the minimum percentage of purchased vehicles, other than exempted vehicles, that must meet those emission standards and expands the vehicles exempted to include a vehicle to be used by a peace officer whose duties include the apprehension of persons for violation of a Texas criminal law.