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The Utah Senate passed legislation Thursday seeking to give tax credits to Utah refineries to speed up the manufacturing of cleaner-burning gasoline.
"This is the one thing that will incentivize clean air faster in 2020 and over the course of time," said Senate Majority Leader Ralph Okerlund, R-Monroe.
Last year the Legislature set up a program that allows oil companies to claim tax credits for investments made to upgrade refineries to produce the cleaner-burning Tier 3 fuels. This year, 2SB102 sets that credit at 50 percent if they make the investments by 2020 and then phases it downward over time to 30 percent in 2025.
The goal is to give refineries an incentive to make the change sooner. Okerlund said the Tier 3 gasoline burns 30 percent cleaner than the existing fuels. One refinery, Tesoro, is already moving in that direction, Okerlund said, but "the others were kind of waiting to see what we were going to do."
The federal government has required refineries to phase in the Tier 3 fuels, but because Utah is a smaller market, there has been concern that the state would be late to receive the gasoline.
The Senate passed the bill on a vote of 23-1 and sent it back to the House for final action.
— By Robert Gehrke