TERP has been in place since 2001, and, according to EPA’s Rauscher, has given away about $506 million in grants and rebates for replacing 7,000 vehicles
Steven Prokopy
TERP has been in place since 2001, and, according to EPA’s Rauscher, has given away about $506 million in grants and rebates for replacing 7,000 vehicles and other equipment, or the equivalent of 125,000 tons of NOx reduction in the life of the program. Recipients include not just construction materials company and contractors, but also farmers, school districts, and local governments.
In addition to being located in one of the state’s nonattainment areas (designated regions, usually around metropolitan hubs, that do not meet federal emissions standards), a company or group applying for grants or rebates must have qualified on- or off-road equipment. The applicant must calculate how much NOx can be reduced by replacing, retrofitting or upgrading the equipment, and they must agree to operate the new equipment for at least seven years. We want to make sure the money is going toward cleaning up the air in a particular region, so we don’t want a company to take it to another region or out of state, explains Rauscher.
All grant and rebate recipients are required to report to the state the gallons of fuel consumed and miles traveled on any new or retrofitted equipment. Recipients have the option of purchasing a GPS-enabled device as a means of collecting and relaying data to the state.
Although the program is somewhat similar, TERP is not connected to the U.S. EPA’s National Clean Diesel Campaign (NCDC), which recently made available $50 million in grant funding to establish clean diesel projects aimed at emissions from the nation’s existing fleet of diesel engines. The grants are available to state, local, regional and tribal governments, as well as nonprofits and institutions with transportation, educational services and air quality. The grants are targeting school or transit buses, medium- and heavy-duty trucks, marine engines, locomotives and nonroad engines.
The national campaign, which has been active for a few years, has been responsible for retrofitting more than 400,000 existing engines, cutting emissions by nearly 300,000 tons. More information about NCDC and funding opportunities can be found at www.epa.gov/cleandiesel.