The Department of Energy issued guidance for federally funded, state-run home energy rebate programs on Friday, ending the ability for households to qualify for rebates when replacing fossil fuel-fired appliances with electric alternatives. It also removed requirements such as a consumer satisfaction survey with the aim of streamlining the programs.
“DOE continues to prioritize stewardship of taxpayer funds but has identified areas of unnecessary duplication for oversight,” the guidance said. The guidance concerns DOE’s Home Owner Managing Energy Savings and High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate programs.
DOE said it is replacing both programs’ consumer protection plan with a fraud, waste, and abuse mitigation plan and removing requirements for internal review plans, a consumer satisfaction survey, and dispute resolution procedures beyond existing state laws and regulations.
“DOE is also restricting the usage of self-attestation for income qualification to align the Tribal requirements with the fraud, waste, and abuse reduction requirements in the HEEHR Program for States and Territories,” the guidance said, and it is “removing all program requirements not required by statute related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
For the HEEHR program, DOE is ending program allowances for switching from gas appliances to electric “and instead allowing rebates for upgrading HVAC and appliances only from existing electric equipment to more efficient electric equipment. HVAC and electric appliances in new construction will continue to be allowable.”
For the HOMES program, DOE said it is “expanding consumer choice” by “allowing usage of rebate funds to cover product shipping and contractor travel costs for territories, [Alaska] and [Hawaii] to provide access to products not locally available, allowing usage of rebate funds to include warranties or accessories necessary for the base installation and operation of the retrofits,” allowing grantees to pay state and local taxes with rebate funds and making the ENERGY STAR requirement optional.
The Sierra Club criticized the guidance in a Monday release, saying it will “create confusion, make it significantly harder for households to access funds to upgrade polluting or inefficient appliances, and disrupt programs already approved and underway in multiple states.”
“In addition to violating the law that established this program, this guidance directly undermines the program’s purpose: switching from a gas furnace to an efficient heat pump is often one of the highest-impact, highest-savings upgrades a household can make,” the group said. Other aspects of the guidance, they said, remove “important oversight steps intended to protect consumers.”
The Building Performance Association celebrated the new guidance in a Monday release, noting that it is a step toward the release of rebate funds that have been paused while the Trump administration reviewed the HOMES and HEEHR programs.
“The rebate programs have the potential to cut energy bills in half for participating Americans,” Kara Saul-Rinaldi, chief policy officer with the BPA, said in a release. “We look forward to working with our contractor members, state energy offices, and the Trump Administration to ensure these critical programs are able to help America achieve state and national energy goals.”
DOE said in the guidance documents that it “intends to publish revised program guidance documents to further detail these changes in the near future,” and “grantees should work with their assigned DOE Project Officer on next steps for their specific award.”
