The IRA rebates changed. Most articles about them didn't.
DOE rewrote the rules on May 29, 2026. Fuel-switching is out, insulation comes first, and a federal allocation to your state is still not a rebate you can claim. Here is how HEAR and HOMES actually work now.
HEAR pays per appliance. HOMES pays on savings.
Two separate IRA programs, two separate funding streams, two different ways of deciding what you get.
HEAR, the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates program (IRA section 50122), pays on the thing you install. Each measure has its own cap, the caps sit under a household ceiling of up to $14,000, and how much of your cost is covered depends on your income relative to area median income. HOMES, the Home Efficiency Rebates program (IRA section 50121, called HER in some state materials), ignores the equipment list and pays on how much energy the whole house stops using, measured or modeled against savings tiers.
Both are federal money administered by states. Congress appropriated it, DOE allocated it, and then each state has to file a State Implementation Blueprint, get DOE approval, and stand up its own program with its own name, its own contractor list, and its own application. That gap between allocation and launch is where most of the confusion on this topic lives.
| Measure | Cap |
|---|---|
| Heat pump (space heating and cooling) | $8,000 |
| Heat pump water heater | $1,750 |
| Electrical panel | $4,000 |
| Insulation, air sealing, ventilation | $1,600 |
| Electrical wiring | $2,500 |
These are national design caps, not guaranteed amounts. Total per household is capped at $14,000, and your income tier decides what share of your cost the program pays.
Up to the per-measure caps and up to $14,000 total per household. This is the tier the program was built around, and in several launched states it is the only tier that is open.
Same per-measure caps, same $14,000 household ceiling, but you pay half. A $10,000 heat pump job at this tier gets $5,000, not $8,000, because the percentage bites before the cap does.
HEAR is not designed to reach you. State and utility ratepayer-funded rebates usually are, and those are a separate pot of money with their own rules.
HOMES works from the other end. Instead of a measure list, it pays for whole-house performance: you do a package of work, a modeler or a measurement protocol establishes the energy savings, and the rebate scales with the tier you hit. The federal design cap is up to $8,000 per household, and DOE's program page (verified July 15, 2026) frames the top of that range as up to $8,000 for projects achieving minimum 20% energy savings. Market-rate households landing at smaller savings tiers get less.
A few states got DOE approval for higher caps than the federal design number. North Carolina and Georgia both run HOMES at $16,000. If you see a state HOMES figure above $8,000 anywhere, including here, the only acceptable source for it is that state administrator's own page. We do not carry state-level rebate dollars from press coverage, and neither should you when you are budgeting a project.
Program Notices 26-1 and 26-2
Both notices are dated May 29, 2026 and were announced June 1, 2026. Verified July 15, 2026. 26-2 governs HEAR, 26-1 governs HOMES.
Three changes run across both notices. Taken together they narrow the programs from "we will help you electrify" to "we will help you use less energy, and we will pay for electric equipment only where it is not replacing a fossil appliance."
Fuel-switching is out
HEAR rebates are no longer available for replacing a gas, oil, or propane appliance with an electric one. Heat pumps and other electric appliances qualify only in new construction, or when they replace existing electric equipment. This is the change that rewrites the program for most homeowners: the household with the oil boiler, the household the program was most often pitched to, is the household that just lost its federal appliance rebate.
Insulation and air sealing come first
Insulation and air sealing upgrades are now required before appliance rebates. The envelope is no longer an optional add-on you could skip on the way to the heat pump line item. If your state is paying HEAR money under the amended rules, the weatherization work is a prerequisite, not a bonus measure.
DEI and consumer-protection language replaced
DEI and Justice40 provisions were removed from the program requirements. The consumer-protection plans states had to file were replaced with fraud, waste, and abuse mitigation plans. For a homeowner this is mostly administrative, but it is one reason states have to reopen and refile documents they had already gotten approved, which is why launches slipped.
What 26-1 adds for HOMES
Notice 26-1 does the same fuel-switching work on the efficiency side, and it also restarts a program that had effectively stopped.
- HOMES restarts under the new rules after the funding freeze that followed January 2025 and the litigation it triggered; an injunction restored the funds in March 2025.
- ENERGY STAR certification is now optional rather than required.
- Warranties and accessories are coverable costs.
- Alaska and Hawaii get shipping allowances.
- The same fuel-switching elimination that applies to HEAR applies here.
The ENERGY STAR change is worth reading twice. Certification moving from required to optional widens the equipment list a program can pay for, which sounds like good news, and it also removes a floor that used to do your quality screening for you. If your state adopts the optional standard, the burden of checking that the equipment is actually efficient moves to you and your contractor.
Federal policy caught up to the sequencing rule
We have argued envelope-before-equipment since this site launched. As of May 29, 2026, it is a condition of the money.
The requirement that insulation and air sealing be done before appliance rebates is not a bureaucratic hurdle. It is the same physics contractors use when they plan their own houses. A leaky, under-insulated house needs a bigger heat pump than a tight one. Buy the equipment first and you buy more equipment than you needed, and then you pay to run it every winter for fifteen years. Do the envelope first and the heating load drops, the equipment gets smaller, and the same rebate covers a larger share of a smaller number.
The practical version: an energy assessment, then air sealing, then insulation, then the heat pump, then the rest of the electrification. That order is laid out step by step in our retrofit sequencing guide, and the specific case for doing the envelope before the heat pump, with what skipping it costs, is in weatherize before the heat pump.
There is a budgeting consequence, and it is the part most coverage of these notices missed. Envelope work is now the gate on the appliance rebate, which means the money you find for insulation determines whether you reach the rest of the project at all. Insulation and air sealing are also the measures with the widest range of state, utility, and income-qualified support, so the money is usually there if you look in the right order. Our guide to how to pay for insulation works through the options cheapest first: rebates, then low-interest state and utility loans, then on-bill financing, then equity, then contractor financing.
One more thing the notices do not say but the sequence does: air sealing before insulation, always. Blowing insulation over an unsealed attic floor buries the leaks and makes them harder and more expensive to reach later.
If you heat with oil, gas, or propane, read this twice
The federal appliance rebate for your conversion is probably gone. That is not the same as no rebate.
Here is the honest read for a fossil-heated household. Under Program Notice 26-2, HEAR pays for a heat pump only in new construction or when it replaces existing electric equipment. If you are pulling out an oil boiler, a gas furnace, or a propane system, that is fuel-switching, and the federal appliance rebate for it is no longer there. Combine that with the expiration of the 25C tax credit for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, covered in the tax credit guide, and the federal government is currently not paying you to get off fossil heat.
Now the part that gets left out. State and utility rebates are a different pot of money. Most of them are ratepayer-funded, collected through a charge on your energy bill and administered by a state agency or your utility, and they are not governed by DOE program notices at all. Many of them are built specifically to move households off delivered fuels, and many still fund exactly the conversion HEAR no longer covers. Massachusetts, Maine, New York, and the Northwest all run substantial programs on money that has nothing to do with the IRA.
So the question is not "do federal rebates still exist." It is "what does my state and my utility pay, and what conditions come attached." That answer changes by ZIP code and it changes during the year.
On income: HEAR is tiered on area median income for your county and household size. Under 80% AMI the program is designed to cover 100% of project cost up to the per-measure caps. Between 80% and 150% AMI it covers 50% of cost against the same caps, so the percentage usually binds before the cap does. Above 150% AMI you are generally not eligible for HEAR, and your path runs through state and utility programs, low-interest loans, and the operating-cost savings. If you are near the bottom of that range, read free furnace replacement for low-income households, because Weatherization Assistance and LIHEAP-linked channels often move faster than a rebate program that has not launched.
Find out what your state actually pays
The Rebate Matcher checks federal, state, and utility programs against your ZIP code and your project, including the ratepayer-funded programs that survived the federal changes.
A federal allocation is not a rebate
Every state has an allocation. A minority have a program a homeowner can apply to. Every status below carries the date we verified it.
This is the single most common mistake in coverage of these programs. A headline says your state got tens of millions of dollars for home energy rebates, and the money is real, but between the allocation and your bank account sit a State Implementation Blueprint, DOE approval, a contractor network, an application portal, and now an amendment under Program Notices 26-1 and 26-2. Until the administrator opens applications, there is nothing for you to claim.
The states below have something open, with conditions. Read the conditions column, because in several of them the program is technically launched and practically closed to a typical single-family homeowner.
| State | HEAR | HOMES | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Carolina Energy Saver North Carolina (energysavernc.org), admin NC DEQ State Energy Office | Launched and operational | Launched and operational | 2026-07-11 |
| Georgia Admin GEFA (energyrebates.georgia.gov). $25M+ delivered to 1,900+ households as of April 9, 2026, average rebate $10,160 (GEFA press release, verified 2026-07-19) | Launched and operational | Launched and operational | 2026-07-11 |
| Indiana Indiana Energy Saver (indianaenergysaver.com), admin Indiana Office of Energy Development. HOMES up to $4,000 for general homeowners, more for income-qualified | Launched | Launched | 2026-07-11 |
| Wisconsin Delivered through Focus on Energy, admin PSC of Wisconsin | Launched and available | Launched since 8/1/2024 | 2026-07-11 |
| Michigan MiHER, admin EGLE via CLEAResult. Intake limited to households at or below 150% AMI, so market-rate applications are not open | Launched, income-limited | Launched, income-limited | 2026-07-11 |
| Arizona Efficiency Arizona (efficiencyarizona.com), admin Governor's Office | Launched and active | Not launched to consumers | 2026-07-11 |
| New Mexico Branded ECAM, admin EMNRD/ECMD, point-of-sale, live since 9/3/2024 | Launched, partial intake | Not launched | 2026-07-11 |
| New York NYSERDA. First state to launch IRA-funded home energy rebates, June 2024. We do not publish a New York HOMES figure because we have not verified one | Launched and active, amendment imminent | Status unverified | 2026-07-15 |
| Colorado Single-family split by region; Region 1 / Front Range closed | Launched, partially closed | Launching 2026, limited home types | 2026-07-11 |
| California Admin CEC via TECH Clean California. Single-family fully reserved statewide since February 24, 2026, waitlist only. Multifamily applications paused | Active, closed to new single-family | Not launched to consumers | 2026-07-15 |
| Maine New-construction affordable multifamily and income-eligible single-family mobile and manufactured homes only (the $12,900 Mobile Home Initiative). Standard single-family homeowners are not eligible. Provisional pending the state's response to Program Notices 26-1 and 26-2 | Active, highly restricted | Not launched | 2026-07-15 |
| District of Columbia Delivered only through the Affordable Home Electrification program | Launched, income-restricted | Not launched | 2026-07-11 |
Every other state was not launched to consumers as of its verified date, all July 11, 2026 unless noted: Connecticut (July 5), Massachusetts (July 15, administrator-confirmed, to be delivered through the Mass Save income-eligible channel), Vermont (July 15, funding in question and paused), New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska (listed as preparing its application), North Dakota, Montana, Utah, Nevada, Oregon (DOE approval suspension), Washington, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Florida (active pre-launch, not dead), and Hawaii. Idaho is not listed in the rollout data we track.
Not launched does not mean never. Several of those states are in active pre-launch and have blueprints in DOE review; Florida in particular is pre-launch rather than dead, and Massachusetts has an administrator-confirmed plan to deliver through the Mass Save income-eligible channel. Two are moving the other direction: Oregon is under a DOE approval suspension, and Vermont's funding is in question and paused. If you live in a not-launched state, your live money today is state and utility rebates and the loan programs in state energy efficiency loans, not a HEAR application. Start at your state page.
This page will change, and we will change it
States running HEAR or HOMES under the old rules have roughly three months from May 29, 2026 to amend.
The notices gave states about three months to bring their programs into line, which lands around the end of August or early September 2026. Some states will amend and reopen with narrower eligibility. Some will pause intake while they rewrite. Some will lean harder on their own ratepayer-funded programs to cover what HEAR no longer covers. All three of those outcomes change what a homeowner in that state can get, and none of them will be announced with a press release you happen to see.
So treat every status on this page as of its verified date and nothing later. Maine's row is already flagged provisional pending the state's response to the notices. New York's HEAR program is launched and active with an amendment imminent. Those are live situations, not settled ones.
We re-verify this page against administrator sources and update it when states amend. If you are about to sign a contract based on a rebate you read about here, do the thirty-second check anyway: open the administrator's own page for that program and confirm the amount and the eligibility rule are still there. Any page on the internet, including this one, is a snapshot with a date on it.
One deadline that is not moving: Efficiency Maine's insulation and air-sealing rebate program carries a hard completion deadline of September 30, 2026 (verified July 15, 2026). Completion, not application. If you are in Maine and counting on it, the work has to be finished by then.
Five steps that hold in every state
The application details differ by administrator. The order does not.
Check whether your state has launched
Start at your state page, not at a national rebate article. If the program is not open to consumers in your state, nothing else on this list matters yet, and your money is in state and utility programs instead. If it is open, note which channel is open: several launched states are running income-qualified intake only.
Check income eligibility before you shop
HEAR is tiered on area median income for your county and household size, and your tier decides whether you are looking at 100% of cost or 50%. Administrators verify income with documents (tax returns, pay stubs, or categorical eligibility through another program). Do this first, because it changes the size of the project you should be quoting.
Get the assessment or the modeling the program requires
HOMES pays on modeled or measured whole-house energy savings, so it needs an approved modeler or a measurement protocol, not just an invoice. HEAR under the amended rules needs your insulation and air sealing work done or scoped first. Either way an energy assessment is the document the rest of the application hangs on.
Use a contractor the program approves
Nearly every launched program pays through a registered or approved contractor, and work done by anyone else is not reimbursable after the fact. Ask the contractor for their registration in that specific program, by name, before you sign. A contractor who cannot answer that question quickly has not done it before.
Keep the paperwork
Itemized invoice, model and serial numbers, AHRI or equivalent performance documentation, the assessment report, proof of income determination, and the dated photos your installer took. Programs claw back or deny on documentation more often than on eligibility.
Some programs pay at the point of sale and some reimburse after the work is done, and the difference decides how much cash you need on hand. If yours reimburses, the filing sequence matters: our guide on applying for rebates after installation covers what to submit and when. If you are combining a federal rebate with a state or utility one, read rebate stacking first, because the order you apply in can decide whether the second program still counts you as eligible. And for the money that fills the gap between the rebate and the invoice, start with how to pay for home energy upgrades.
Common questions about HEAR and HOMES
What is HEAR?
HEAR is the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates program, IRA section 50122. It pays per appliance, income-tiered, up to $14,000 total per household. Design caps are $8,000 for a heat pump, $1,750 for a heat pump water heater, $4,000 for an electrical panel, $1,600 for insulation, air sealing, and ventilation, and $2,500 for wiring. It is federally funded but state-run, so the caps are a design ceiling, not a promise in your state.
What is the difference between HEEHRA and HEAR?
They are the same program. HEEHRA (High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Act) was the name used in draft legislation and in most 2022 and 2023 coverage. DOE named the implemented program HEAR. If an article calls it HEEHRA and describes it in the present tense, that article predates the current rules and you should not price a project from it.
Is HOMES still happening?
Yes. DOE Program Notice 26-1, dated May 29, 2026 and announced June 1, 2026 (verified July 15, 2026), restarts HOMES under new rules after the funding freeze that followed January 2025 and the litigation around it, with an injunction restoring funds in March 2025. It still pays on whole-house modeled or measured energy savings, with a federal design cap of up to $8,000 for projects achieving minimum 20% energy savings.
Can I get a rebate for switching from gas to a heat pump?
Not through HEAR under the amended rules. Program Notice 26-2 eliminated fuel-switching: heat pumps and electric appliances qualify only for new construction or for replacing existing electric equipment. State and utility ratepayer-funded rebates are separate money with separate rules, and many of them still fund gas-to-heat-pump conversions. Check your state page and the Rebate Matcher rather than assuming either way.
Can I combine HEAR and HOMES?
Usually not on the same measure, but the rule is set by your state rather than by us. North Carolina's launched program, for example, states outright that HEAR and HOMES cannot be combined for the same technology upgrade (verified July 11, 2026). What often does work is HOMES on the whole-house retrofit and state or utility rebates on specific equipment. Check your own program's stacking rules, and see our guide on rebate stacking before you sign a contract.
When will my state launch?
There is no reliable national launch calendar, and DOE Program Notices 26-1 and 26-2 pushed several states back into amending documents they had already gotten approved. The honest answer is to watch your state page. A federal allocation to your state is not a rebate you can claim, and no launch date is real until the administrator publishes an application.
Keep reading
The federal tax credit expired
25C and 25D ended for property placed in service after December 31, 2025. What that means for a 2026 project, and what you can still claim on your 2025 return.
Rebate stacking
Which programs combine, which cancel each other, and the order to apply in so one rebate does not disqualify the next.
State energy efficiency loans
Administrator-verified state and utility loan programs with published terms, including 0% options, and the conditions attached to each.
How to pay for insulation
The measure the amended rules now put first. Costs, rebates, and the cheapest money for envelope work.
Free furnace replacement for low income
Weatherization Assistance, LIHEAP, and the income-qualified channels several launched HEAR programs run through.
How to pay for home energy upgrades
The whole-project view: rebates first, then low-interest loans, then equity, then contractor financing, in cost order.
Stop guessing which rebates you can still get.
The federal rules changed on May 29, 2026, but state and utility programs did not. The Rebate Matcher checks all of them against your ZIP code and your project in a couple of minutes.
Open the Rebate Matcher