Today, the Atlas Buildings Hub is rolling out a new tool, the Home Energy Rebates Tracker, to provide more clarity about the program status of the Home Energy Rebates programs in states and territories.
The Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates (HEAR) provide up to $14,000 per household for appliances and efficiency upgrades. These include electric heat pumps, electric heat pump water heaters, electric heat pump clothes dryers, electric stoves/cooktops/ranges/ovens, electrical panel upgrades, electrical wiring, insulation, air sealing, and mechanical ventilation. In conjunction with HEAR, the Home Efficiency Rebates (HER) provide up to $8,000 per household for projects that are modeled to reduce home energy use by at least 20 percent. Single-family homes and multifamily buildings are both eligible, and rebates scale by estimated energy savings and household income. Each state designs its own programs to be approved by the U.S. Department of Energy, so many program details will differ from state to state.
As of May 6th, 54 jurisdictions — every territory and every state except for Idaho and South Dakota — are participating in the federal Home Energy Rebates programs. South Dakota declined to apply for funding and Idaho applied for and was awarded funding, but the state’s legislature rejected the funding. All other entities were awarded funding, with a slew of awards being announced in the waning hours of the Biden Administration in mid-January. As a result, about $8 billion in federal funding from the Inflation Reduction Act has been awarded.
Across the United States, there are 11 active HEAR programs and five active HER programs. In the District of Columbia, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, both HEAR and HER are available. HEAR programs are also active in Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, New Mexico, New York, and Rhode Island. All other states and territory agency websites — listed on the dashboard — report that the programs are under development. It must be noted that many states and territories paused development of their programs or paused the programs themselves amid federal funding freezes at the beginning of this year. Thankfully, all of the programs that had launched and then been paused have since resumed.
This dashboard represents just the first iteration of the Home Energy Rebates Tracker. In the coming months, Buildings Hub will release more detailed dashboards, providing individualized program data on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction and program by program level, as these details are announced.
