New Technology Research and Development (NTRD)

PI: Yiqun Huang

The purpose of the New Technology Research and Development (NTRD) program is to identify, test and evaluate new emissions-reducing technologies with potential for commercialization in the state of Texas and to facilitate their certification or verification.

The primary objective of the NTRD Program is to promote the development of commercially available technologies that will support projects that may be funded under the Texas Emissions Reduction Program (TERP) Emissions Reduction Incentive Grants Program. The NTRD Program will also work to streamline and expedite the process whereby the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) give recognition of and credit for new, innovative and creative technological advancement. This program will help spur the entrepreneurial and inventive spirit of Texans to help develop new technologies to solve existing air quality problems.

NTRD was launched by lawmakers in 2001 in the same bill that created TERP. The two efforts are complementary. With funds from fees and surcharges, TERP provides incentive grants in a voluntary program aimed at reducing emissions of ozone-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx), mainly from heavy-duty diesel vehicles and equipment in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas. NTRD awards grants to facilitate the development, verification and certification of new NOx reducing technologies so they may be broadly and economically used to minimize this ozone-causing pollutant.

www.NTRD.org