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.
