After several months of delays, a federally funded program to help Arizonans with household energy efficiency upgrades is set to launch this month. Qualifying households will be able to apply for rebates of 50% to 100% of costs for appliances like heat pumps or electric stoves.
Biden administration officials visited Phoenix last summer to announce the new initiative called Efficiency Arizona. The program would be funded through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which had allotted nearly $9 billion in federal funding for states to set up home energy rebate programs. Arizona was set to receive $153 million for its program.
But the program faced administrative delays before its planned launch last fall, then came pauses in federal funding under the Trump administration.
Now, the Governor’s Office of Resiliency has announced funds are unfrozen.
“We’ve been told by the Department of Energy that the contract should be awarded and that, as long as we are continuing with legitimate costs, which we are, that we will receive the funds that are owed to the state,” said Blaise Caudill, the office’s deputy director of resiliency.
Some Arizonans have already received rebates on heat pump cooling systems through the Efficiency Arizona program. Now, Caudill said the program will expand to cover more types of upgrades. Qualifying home energy projects include installations of heat pump water heaters, heat pump clothes dryers or electric stoves, as well as upgrades to electrical wiring or insulation.
Rebates will cover half the cost of projects for households making up to 150% of the area median income – in Phoenix, that’s about $154,000 per year for a family of four. Families making up to 80% of the area median income will qualify to have the full cost of the project covered.
Caudill said, in most cases, participating households will not have to pay the full project cost upfront before receiving rebates.
“We actually do connect them with a local contractor who does the work and then we provide the rebate on the back end to the contractor,” Caudill said.
The resiliency office expects to be able to provide rebates to about 20,000 Arizona families through the program.
Caudill said applications will open up on EfficiencyArizona.com within the next two weeks.
“We really encourage Arizonans to take full advantage of the rebate dollars that are coming into the state to improve their homes and save on energy,” Caudill said.
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