Alternative Fuel and Advanced Vehicle Incentives Webinar (Text Version)

This is a text version of the video for Alternative Fuel and Advanced Vehicle Incentives Webinar presented on March 18, 2013.

COORDINATOR: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of today's conference. At that time, you may press star 1 on your touchtone phone to ask a question.

I would like to inform all parties that today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Sandra Loi, thank you, you may begin.

SANDRA LOI: Thank you Shelia thank you everyone for joining us today. As the Operator said my name is Sandra Loi and I work at the National Renewable Energy Lab providing assistance to the Clean Cities program.

For those of you who are not familiar with Clean Cities it's been around for about 20 years, we're celebrating that this year the anniversary and the ultimate goal of the program is to help cut petroleum in the transportation sector through our national network of nearly 100 Clean Cities coordinators, which are located all across the United States.

Thank you for joining us for this webinar today. We do put on monthly webinar's on different topics and this month's topic is the alternative fuel and the advanced vehicle incentives, laws and incentives webinar that is available on our alternative fuel data center.

We have laws and incentive section and we have one of our colleagues who is going to be walking you through the tool today that gives you an overview for those who are not familiar with it.

It's one of the many tools and resources offered through the Clean Cities program that offers information on alternative fuels and advanced technology vehicles.

So the webinar today will provide an overview as I said of the laws and incentives database. You'll learn to identify state and federal incentives and get a little bit more details on some trends related to state incentives as well as discussions on the recent fiscal cliff legislation.

So I'm going to go ahead and introduce our speaker today. Our speaker today is Alexis Schayowitz she's with ICF International and she joined ICF in July of 2006 and works in the company's energy environment and transportation group specializing in alternative fuels, advanced vehicles and other petroleum reduction strategies in the transportation sector.

She provides technical assistance, research and program support to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy for the Clean Cities and Energy Policy Act State and Alternative Fuel Provider Program.

Alexis and her team monitor and respond to inquiries via the Clean Cities Technical Response Service and maintain the alternative fuel data center station locator and laws and incentives databases.

Alexis has a degree from Hamilton College in Government and Neuroscience and Alexis I'll go ahead and pass it off to you so you can get your presentation started, thank you.

ALEXIS SCHAYOWITZ: Great thanks Sandra and thank you everybody for joining us today. I'll skip ahead to the first slide here. As Sandra mentioned we're—I'm going to give an overview of the alternative fuels data center or the AFDC laws and incentive database.

And I'll introduce the database as a tool and re-familiarize you, I'm sure many of you have already been to the AFDC and maybe have conducted a search of the database but I'll—so I'll just touch on the different ways that you can search the database and the information that's contained there and the ways you might be able to use it in your day-to-day jobs.

And then, you know, refocusing on incentives in particular the database does cover laws, incentives and regulations relating to alternative fuels in advanced vehicles but today focusing on both federal incentives as Sandra mentioned specifics related to the recent fiscal cliff bill and also at the state level incentives that are available both some information on trends and examples of state incentives.

The idea here is to give you an idea of what might be happening at your state level but more importantly to give you an idea of what's out there and if it's part of your job to talk to legislators or talk to the industry about incentives that you might want to put in place you can—just give you examples so you can see what other states are doing and then I'll open it up for questions about the tool or the type of incentives and laws that we track.

So basically this is the laws, an overview of the laws and incentives database. Here is the link and I do encourage you to visit it on the website on your own. We won't actually be running through the actual website today but I do encourage you to go there and check it out.

The website or the database has been in existence since the last 1990's. It's a searchable online database of state and federal laws, incentives and regulations. We do include utility and private incentives as well at the state level.

And the focus there for those utility and private incentives is on monetary incentives. Later on I'll discuss some of the other kinds of incentives that we cover at the state and federal level as well as unique incentives that are available from utilities and private industry.

And the database basically provides a description of—a short description of each incentive or a law. It's not—the idea is not to provide you with all of the information you could possibly need to take advantage of that incentive.

The idea is to give you an overview of what's out there and provide you with points of contact or websites that you can go and find out more about the incentive or law, you know, from the source because we're not the source so we try to direct you to the right place.

The topics covered in the database are alternative fuels, advanced vehicles, air quality and that's typically emissions in the transportation sector, vehicle efficiency, idle reduction and any of the other Clean Cities typical portfolio items that Sandra mentioned.

The database in addition to featuring descriptions, searchable—excuse me searchable descriptions of alternative fuel, laws and incentives also has a few other features.

The first being summaries of key federal legislation and this is basically a chronology of the main legislation, federal legislation that has affected the alternative fuels industry over the years.

So the Energy Policy Acts of 1992 and 2005, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act or ARRA is in there. It just basically gives a summary of each of those legislations that you can see how things have progressed over the years.

Another feature that's included in the database is a table. A lot of incentives sorted by technology or fuel type and I'll focus later on the different types of the technologies and fuels that we include. It also has tables by incentive or regulation type or user type.

So those tables provide counts of each incentive type so that you can see, you know, where the major trends may be but also link to the examples of the laws and incentives that fall into those categories.

And the last sort of additional feature of the database is examples of notable or common local laws and incentives. It's important to note that the database is not designed to track local laws and incentives.

We do provide these examples if you are looking to identify or come up with a local incentive or law to help you out but it's not a comprehensive list of all of the local laws and incentives that are out there.

As far as data collection methodologies go the database is maintained by the National Renewable Energy Lab and ICF International. On the state level we do update the information and review the information for each state on an annual basis as the state legislative session ends.

We do update, make bigger updates when we do get from our points of contact or from different sources if we do hear that a state passed a law or regulation we will make those changes outside of our update schedule.

But you can be assured that we are looking through all of the state information on an annual basis and they do it by—actually list the last month that the state was updated so you can see how long it's been.

So our typical sources for the information include state legislative and executive office websites so we do search those websites using a list of terms that we have found to be relevant to the information in the database.

We also have points of contact that we reach out to and those include your Clean Cities coordinators, your state energy office, industry associations, industry, businesses in the industry and utility staff.

And the—each state in the database does include a point of contact table that where you can see the different contacts that we reach out to on an annual basis and that we maintain as points of contact for individual incentives and laws.

Like I said for the coordinators on the phone you know we reach out to you once a year for your updated contact information but also to let us know if there's anything going on in your state that we should be aware of, any updates, any new incentives or laws.

But again we do appreciate those updates whenever, throughout the year whenever you might have them feel free to—if you know if something's in the works or if you know that an incentive or law has actually passed.

And that applies to stakeholders too, I'll provide our contact information at the end of the presentation and you're welcome to reach out to us at any point with updates.

And the last source is we do subscribe to industry newsletters and other publications for information. We find Clean Cities coalition newsletters are very helpful and also, you know the fuel specific industry association.

On the federal side it's definitely more of an ad-hoc update process. We will make updates to the database when new legislation has signed into law or when agencies rules are issued we do track the federal register very closely.

And we do look through everything that's in the database on an annual basis to make sure that the information is current and up to date and nothing has slipped. We conduct quarterly legislative searches via the Library of Congress Web site.

So here you can kind of see the breadth of information that's included in the database. These different columns are the different ways that we code our laws and incentive descriptions.

So you can see we cover in the first column we cover the following alternative fuel and technology types and this includes your basic EPAct fuels and then aftermarket conversion, fuel economy or efficiency, idle reduction.

On the incentives column you have all of your typical monetary incentive type grants, tax credits that sort of thing but you also—we count other incentives as incentives so exemptions.

So for instance if a state allows alternative fuel vehicles to travel in HOV lanes that would be considered an exemption, which would be an incentive to purchasing the vehicle so it's coded or considered an incentive in the database.

And there are other incentive types, technical assistance for instance that different states and federal agencies offer and we quote those sort of under another category and I'll later on go into details specifically at the state level of each of these and examples of each of these incentive types.

And today's presentation isn't going to focus a lot on laws and regulations but these are the different types that we do cover. You know, typically you'll see information on state taxes, fuel production, renewable fuel standards and mandates, the laws and regulations are just as important as the incentives and we do capture them in the database.

And then the last way that we sort of categorize each of the laws and incentives in the database is by the user type. So if you're a vehicle owner or driver you'd want to pull up all the incentives that would relate to vehicles and fuel that you may be interested in taking advantage of.

And the list goes on as far as the different types of users that might want to use the database to find out about incentives and laws that they would be eligible for.

So here's just a basic screen shot of the main landing page of the alternative fuel data center laws and incentives website. Here you can see there's a couple different ways to get to different areas of the website but I'll focus on this main landing page in the middle.

Here you can see where you can access your federal laws and incentives, state information, here is where you go to search for all the different types of incentives and laws.

Here's where you're going to find your tables of the different types of incentives and laws and accounts that are available. Here's where you're going to find key federal or key federal legislation so that chronology of all the different acts that have been passed that relate to alternative fuel in vehicles.

And here is where you're going to find those local examples of incentives and laws. And I'll also draw your attention to the maps and data on the right side of the page. I'll touch on that later but that's another tool that you can use for—in your daily work.

So here once you've searched the database this is an example of a description that you might find about an incentive. And as I said before the idea here is not to provide you with all the information you would need to in this case take advantage of the HOV lane exemption in Colorado.

We want to provide you with as much information as possible to, you know, or the general overview is that you can find more information on the website or with the point of contact.

So here we have, excuse me—is where you would go for the website for more information. Here's the point of contact and not every incentive or law has a point of contact but if we do have somebody who's agreed to be in the database and provide information then we will include them here.

And if there was actually a legislation that passed that put this lane exemption into place we include it as well so you can actually go back to the start, you know, where, what was the law that put this exemption into place.

And in this case you can also see that we've provided a general—any general information that might be helpful. So in this case the lane exemption as of April 2012 had reached its quota of permits and new applicants were placed on a waiting list.

So we've included that here so that, I mean that we felt was a necessary piece of information for anybody looking to take advantage of this incentive. It is still out there but we, you know, want you to know that they've reached their quota.

So that's a basic general overview of what's available now on the website. I did want to let you know that we, ICF did put together a fact sheet at the end of the year, this year that was a summary of the 2012 state legislative actions.

So the trend incentives and laws that went into place at the state level and the trends available at the state level and that will be available to Clean Cities coordinators very soon, we'll be distributing it via the Clean Cities coordinator list.

We will be doing those fact sheets moving forward about on a quarterly basis or so just outlining the different trends that we have come across as a result of maintaining the database.

The other thing is that we had a lot of requests for information about successful incentives particularly incentives and programs. And for us it's very hard to define success because everybody measures it differently.

You know, some people might measure success of an incentive by the number of vehicles put on the road. Some might measure it by the number of jobs created, the number of money distributed. There's any number of factors that you could measure the success of a program.

So we are looking into doing some case studies on specific incentive programs that we consider to be successful on some level and really delve deep into the reasons why they were successful.

And we will be reaching—perhaps reaching out to some coordinators about the incentives that may be featured in these case studies but if you have a suggestion for one that you think that we should look into please let us know.

Again I will provide the contact information at the end of the presentation and I believe it will also be posted online after the webinar is over. And we are always looking for additional content that would be helpful both for the database and for coordinators and their stakeholders as a result of our research through the database.

So feel free to let us know if things are helpful to—would be helpful to you if you'd like us to repurpose any of the information so that it's, you know, presented a different way that kind of thing. We are always open to those new ideas for content for the website.

So moving out of the description of the database itself and into some information about state and federal incentives that are available. One of the big things that has come up recently is the fiscal cliff legislation passed at the beginning of this year, actually signed at the beginning of this year.

It was H.R. 8 the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 also known as the Fiscal Cliff Bill. And this bill amongst all the other things that it did—it retroactively extended several fuel and infrastructure tax credits and federal fuel infrastructure tax credits.

And by retroactively I mean most of those tax credits actually expired at the end of the 2010 or 2011 and they were extended through the end of 2013 so that, you know, the purchases and sales and that sort of thing that would have taken place in 2012 would also qualify.

It also expanded the definition of second generation biofuel and extended two tax incentives related to these fuels and we'll get into more detail about the tax incentives that it affected in a bit.

And introduced a credit for two and three wheel plug in electric drive vehicles. There had been a tax credit in place for four wheeled vehicles and this extended it to two and three wheels.

And has extended discretionary program funding for U.S. Department of Agriculture program through the end of fiscal 2013. So that was important as well.

So here I'm providing a table and again this information will be available posted on the Clean Cities Web site once the webinar is over so you'll be able to refer back to this.

But here I've summarized some of the tax credits that are available at the federal level. I do want to remind you that NREL and ICF we're not tax professionals and we do always say that, you know, when people come to us with questions that you should really consult a tax professional or the IRS directly if you have questions or you are making big decisions related to the tax credits, we're not experts in the federal tax code for certain.

So we've provided a general overview here and I'll walk you through it but that's just a general word to the wise. So here we have the first batch of federal tax credits would be those relating to fuel.

The first one is alternative fuel and mixture access tax credits. There is a credit for 50 cents per gallon of alternative fuel and in the case of CNG that's actually 121 cubic feet because it's not measured by gallon.

And it's available for CNG, LNG, propane and also for P-series fuels such as Fischer-Tropsch fuels, renewable natural gas and some of those other EPact fuels, alternative fuels.

And here are the forms and publications available from the IRS that provide more information and this tax credit was one of those that was retroactively extended by the Fiscal Cliff Bill to the end of 2013.

The—this tax credit is available for entities that are typically responsible for paying the fuel excise tax but it's also available for tax exempt entities. They can receive a payment for the fuel dispensed.

So next is the biodiesel income tax credit and this is for people who fold or use pure 100—B100 biodiesel and deliver it into a tank. It's a tax credit against income tax liability.

Biodiesel and this applies to the next credit as well, in order to be eligible it must be—the biodiesel must be registered with the EPA. And then next up is biodiesel mixture excise tax credit and the assist for blenders that are produced in fold or are used to qualify biodiesel mixtures as a fuel in our trader business.

And both of these tax credits are for $1 a gallon and that applies to the bio—in the case of the mixtures- the biodiesel portion of the gallon or of the fuel. The next is the hydrogen fuel excise tax credit and this actually works very similar to the alternative fuel tax credit.

I separated it out because it has a different expiration date but liquefied hydrogen is eligible and it's again 50 cents a gallon. Second generation biofuel producer income tax credit is the next one on the list.

This is fuel produced from any cellulosic matter and that is available on a renewable basis or any cold faded algae's, unintelligible bacteria alumna. Again this is—was affected by the Fiscal Cliff Bill and is eligible or available through the end of 2013.

So moving away from fuels and into infrastructure. The alternative fuel infrastructure tax credit is available to individuals and businesses who install alternative fuel infrastructure and it's for 30% of the cost of the infrastructure not to exceed $30,000 in the case of a retailer or infrastructure and then $1000 in the case of residential.

And then it's available for CNG, LNG, propane, EVSE electric vehicle supply equipment, E85 and biodiesel blends above 20% biodiesel. Again it's available through the end of 2013.

Moving onto vehicles, the plug in electric drive vehicle tax credit is a credit from—that ranges from $2500 to $7500 and that's based on battery capacity and gross vehicle weight rating and both plug in electric vehicles or all electric vehicles and plug in hybrid electric vehicles are eligible.

And it's up to 14,000 lb. gross vehicle weight ratings so that's typically what will classify as a light duty or medium duty vehicle. And this one doesn't have an expiration date as it stands instead it's phased out when the manufacturer in question, the manufacturer of the vehicles sells 200,000 PEV's. So there's a phase out period after each manufacturer reaches that quota for their vehicle.

And the next one is what I mentioned earlier it's a two and three wheeled plug in electric vehicle tax credit for 10% of the cost up to $2500 of a plug in electric vehicle.

And lastly on this page is the fuel cell vehicle tax credit and it's up to $4000 and that's for light duty vehicles, it's also available for medium and heavy duty vehicles and the credit is based on the vehicle weight and that one is available through the end of 2014.

So beyond the tax credits there are many other incentives that are out there available from the federal agencies. These can tend to vary as far as funding goes as sometimes it's a grant program that's available at all times and sometimes it's more solicitation based.

So these are the types of programs that you really do need to refer to the agency websites for more information but you have the U.S. Department of Transportation and they have their Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement program or CMAQ.

And that program money is available through State Department of Transportation, municipal planning organizations and transit agencies and it's a—there's a wide variety of kinds of programs or kinds of incentives that are available.

But idle reduction technology, alternative fuel infrastructure and conversions do typically apply and the most recent surface transportation bill MAP-21 that was passed last year specifically calls out provisions for natural gas and EVSE under CMAQ.

The Department of Transportation also has a few airport programs most notably as far as recent updates there's a zero emission vehicle pilot program that was introduced as part of MAP-21.

And under this program a grant program 50% of vehicle purchases and infrastructure, development are covered for and the priority is given to airports and non-attainment areas so if airports want to take advantage of that program. There are several other incentives that are available from the Department of Transportation that you can find on the law and incentives database.

Next is U.S. Department of Agriculture and I mentioned that several of these programs were extended as part of the Fiscal Cliff Bill but they include advanced biofuel feed stock initiative, production grants, loan guarantees, production of payments, biodiesel, education grants, ethanol infrastructure, grants and loan guarantees for rural areas, a really—a wide variety of different programs available from USDA.

Next is the environmental protection agency or EPA meaning specifically the national clean diesel campaign. Under that umbrella there are several programs, clean agriculture program, clean construction, clean ports, clean school bus programs.

These are all larger programs that sometimes have grants under—available under them that you—I really encourage you to check out the EPA Web site about grant availability or incentive availability and often they also have technical assistance programs and that sort of thing.

And others include that aren't under that national clean diesel campaign umbrella include Smart Way and pollution prevention grants and there are many others.

And last but certainly not least is the U.S. Department of Energy, lots of programs available specifically in the EERE office, you guys are all familiar with Clean Cities and our frequently funding opportunity announcements are always available from Clean Cities but there are lots of other programs out there.

There's loan guarantee programs, advanced energy research project grants, all of which are listed in the laws and incentives database. And moving onto the state level as I mentioned ICF did a brief analysis of what was introduced in 2012.

And this graph shows a basic overview of the state levels incentives that were introduced by fuel or technology type. And what you're seeing here is both state incentives, the ones that are available from the state governments or state agencies but also private and utility incentives.

And what we found is that there's really the bulk of incentives and rebates that are available or incentives sorry, are available at—for plug in electric vehicles. And those are rebates, utility rate reduction, technical assistance, tax incentives, grants.

And this just to reiterate is the ones that were introduced in 2012. So you can also from our analysis we found ten new incentives introduced related to Clean Cities portfolio items and this is considerably fewer than the 22 introduced in 2011 and likely a reflection of reduced state budgets.

One of the things you'll find here is that this graph is a little misleading because the bars won't—the green bars won't add up to ten because there are several incentives to actually apply across fuel types.

So if an incentive applies to both biodiesel and ethanol it will show up in both of those green bars. The private entity and utility side we have 16 new incentives introduced in 2012.

They typically apply to customers in specific areas or utility service territories. And this number is about the same as that was what was introduced in 2011, there were 18 similar incentives.

This is just another way of looking at that information. So these are the types of incentives that were introduced. So you'll see that the majority of the incentives that were introduced in 2012 were rebates.

And as I mentioned earlier when we were looking at that landing page of the laws and incentives database we do have or the AFDC does have a maps and data page.

And that page it gives graphs and maps of trends related to laws and incentives over time and then tools such as this one. So this is just an example of one of the things that you'll find on the maps and data page.

These are maps and they haven't been updated with 2012 incentives and laws, they will be soon and this is both incentives and laws. And it shows the density across the United States.

And so on the left you'll see in the electric vehicle side that California is the real stand out as far as the density of laws and incentives related to electric vehicles. That's probably not surprising to most.

And then on the—if you compare that to ethanol you see that it's much more widespread and you'll see a lot more higher density in the Midwest in fact Illinois is the highest with 16 laws and incentives. So these are the types of tools that are available on the maps and data site that give you an idea of what we have in the database.

So here I'm going to quickly give you an overview of the types of state level incentives that are available. As I mentioned earlier this isn't designed to tell you exactly what's available in your state. If you want to do that you should definitely go on the tool and search.

I just wanted to give you an overview of what different states are doing and encourage you to go to the website to check out these descriptions. So first would be fuel vehicle infrastructure tax incentives and these are similar to those that are available at the federal level, tax credits like in New York they have a 15 cent per gallon biofuel production tax credit, tax exemptions.

And in New Jersey if you buy a zero emission vehicle you're exempt from the sales and use tax. Tax refunds in Nebraska, natural gas and propane used to fuel bus—certain types of buses is available or qualifies for a tax refund. And in Iowa tax—there's a tax deduction available for fuel cell vehicles and they use the same definition of a fuel cell vehicle as the federal tax incentive.

The next is and these are sort of in—the intent is the types are in the order of sort of popularity of these incentives. So the next of these sort of not necessarily monetary incentives but exemptions so things that would be considered an incentive for somebody buying a vehicle or installing infrastructure but it's not necessarily money to help pay for it.

So a very popular one is an idle reduction equipment weight exemption. So most states or all states have a vehicle weight limit for particularly for heavy duty vehicles.

And if they install idle reduction they have an exemption available in the case of Alabama here of up to an additional 400 pounds for that idle reduction equipment so that they're not disadvantaged, you know, for putting in that idle reduction equipment.

Another exemption type would be a parking incentive. So in Arizona alternative fuel vehicles may park in car pool areas, which would typically be reserved just for car pool, people that were taking advantage of a car pool.

HOV lane incentives, which I mentioned earlier in California, alternative fuel vehicles specifically compressed natural gas, fuel cell vehicles and electric vehicles can travel in HOV lanes without having an additional passenger or passengers in the car.

Another type of incentive would be the registration fee exemption in Washington DC. There's a reduced fee for fuel efficient vehicles not based on the fuel economy, EPA fuel economy of the vehicle.

And then in Michigan there's an emission testing requirement exemption so alternative fuel vehicles are exempt from emission testing. And so all these exemption types are great for states that don't necessarily have the money available but they want to be doing something that's encouraging the use of these vehicles and the infrastructure.

The next type of incentive would be grants. In Colorado there's an incentive for 80% of the incremental cost of purchasing PEV's and specifically for agencies, state agencies and non-profits.

And there's a cap up to about $8200 for the vehicle purchases and in Colorado actually there's an infrastructure incentive as well. There's a vehicle research and development grant such as in Indiana alternative fuel vehicles and fuel efficient vehicle production projects are eligible for grants and actually loans as well.

Infrastructure grants in Illinois the amount varies depending on whether you're building a new facility or upgrading an existing facility but up to $30,000 available for facilities installing E85 fueling capabilities.

Education grants in Kentucky there's a grant—grants for up to $2000 for high schools that want to institute biodiesel education programs. And production grants in Minnesota they have a grant for up to 50% of research technical assistance and equipment for cellulosic ethanol production facility and that's up to $500,000.

So these are different kinds of grants available and like I said on the federal grant side these might be ongoing grants and they might be ones that go up once a year for solicitation.

So again something to watch for and to go to the laws and incentive database and find that website to stay up to date on. And rebates are another kind of the monetary incentive.

So we have vehicle rebates and infrastructure rebates. In California, zero emission vehicles or light duty zero emission vehicles are eligible for rebates up to $2500 and in Illinois again this depends on the infrastructure type but level 2 electric vehicle supply equipment is eligible for an incentive up to $7500.

Moving onto loans, a lot of states have loan programs in place so that you can finance your projects at, you know, lower rates than typically. So in Arkansas an idle reduction program for up to $45,000 for each loan at 80% of the prime interest rate for large businesses looking for to put in place idle reduction projects for heavy duty trucking.

And some of these programs and I believe Arkansas is one of them it's a much broader array—broader program that can be—this is just one of the things that qualifies.

And vehicle and infrastructure loans in Oklahoma government fleets are eligible for zero interest loans for the incremental cost of vehicles and infrastructure. And production loans in Iowa they have forgivable and loan interest loans for businesses producing alternative fuels.

And our last sort of incentive type here and example type would be the other category that I was talking about earlier. So here we have many, many utilities across the country are instituting rate incentives for plug in electric vehicle charging.

And the idea here is to encourage the customers to charge off peak and so that they're not adding to the peak load but also giving them a bit of a financial incentive to purchase a vehicle.

So in Virginia, Virginia Dominion has a few PEV rate pricing plans in place. And that's just one example like I said there are many across the country. And another type of incentive that falls into the other category would be technical assistance.

In New York, NYSERDA provides vehicle infrastructure assistance to public and private fleets looking to evaluate the feasibility of alternative fuel vehicles.

And last but not least there are training programs out there. This would be considered incentive for a fleet looking to implement vehicles in Texas the railroad commission provides propane safety and maintenance training that's one example.

So I'd like to open it up for questions. I will remind you that if you have updates to the database please let us know. My contact information is here but the best way to reach ICF is through the technical response service email address or phone number.

Feel free to reach out to us at any time we'd love to hear from both coordinators and stakeholders about any updates to the database for suggestions as I mentioned earlier.

SANDRA LOI: All right thanks Alexis, Sheila can we go ahead and open the lines for some questions?

COORDINATOR: Absolutely, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question please press star 1, un-mute your phone and record your name clearly.

I will require your name to introduce your question. If you need to withdraw your question press star 2. Again to ask a question please press star 1 and record your name.

It will take a few moments for the questions to come through, please stand by.

SANDRA LOI: Great thanks Sheila. Thank you again Alexis and I just wanted to let everyone on the line know that we will be posting the slides and the recording up on the Clean Cities website in the toolbox under webinars and you can search for them under the archives section of the webinar page.

And I will also send out to the full participant list on today's webinar a link directly to that page as well once they are posted. Give us a couple days to get all of that together and put it up on the website but we are happy to share it with you and I'll go ahead and I'll plan to do that once it is live and up on the website.

So thank you all for participating and please go ahead and send in your questions.

COORDINATOR: Our first question is from Mark Williams, go ahead your line is open.

MARK WILLIAMS: Hi I wanted to find out if there is still incentives for neighborhood electric vehicles?

ALEXIS SCHAYOWITZ: Yes the two and three wheeled I believe that the federal tax cut is available for two and three or for neighborhood electric vehicles.

MARK WILLIAMS: Okay I guess the title just threw me.

ALEXIS SCHAYOWITZ: Yes sorry about that.

MARK WILLIAMS: Okay thank you.

COORDINATOR: Again as a reminder please press star 1 on your phone and record your name if you have a question, one moment please.

ALEXIS SCHAYOWITZ: Actually I did want to correct myself there. The—I'm not actually sure that the—that tax credit is available for neighborhood electric vehicles because the vehicles must be able to drive up to 45 miles an hour so that's probably a—might be a limiting factor.

SANDRA LOI: Okay thanks Alexis.

COORDINATOR: And we are showing no further questions at this time.

SANDRA LOI: Okay thank you Sheila. Alexis did you have anything else you wanted to add at this point?

ALEXIS SCHAYOWITZ: I don't think so.

SANDRA LOI: Okay well thank you so much everyone for participating. Alexis' information is up there on the web as is the direct phone number and email to the technical response service where you may send additional information or any questions you may have.

Thank you all for participating and have a great week.

COORDINATOR: That concludes today's conference, thank you for participating you may disconnect at this time.