New climate laws are full of incentives to electrify your home and car, but features are a cumbersome maze. To help you find your way, Rewiring America, a non-profit organization that supports electrification, has released an online calculator to help you figure out what benefits you might qualify for. It has been tried by over 200,000 people.
“I’m glad we’re releasing it because it seems legally useful to people trying to figure out what [the law] means to them,” said Sam Kalish, director of special projects at Rewiring America.
The choice of the consumer is of great importance for the climate. More than 40 percent of U.S. energy emissions are directly or indirectly related to “the decisions households make at the dinner table,” Kalisz says, such as “where they get their electricity from, what they use to heat and cool their homes, and what cars they drive.” “.
Calculators can inform these decisions by pointing Americans to rebates, rebates, and tax credits for home and car electrification that are or will be available to them as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act.
However, when the Canary staff tried the calculator, some frowned: the results it produced could be a little confusing. So consider this article your unofficial guide to how it works and what you can do with the results.
To determine which benefits you qualify for, the calculator asks you for several pieces of information: your zip code, homeownership status, total family income, family size, and whether you file taxes individually, jointly, or as head of household.
It uses different parts of this information to determine if you are eligible for various rewards. For example, you will be eligible for certain incentives if your household income is below a certain absolute amount, and others if it is below a certain percentage of the median income in your area. This calculator uses data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to search based on your zip code and household size. (According to the department, the median national household income in 2021 is $79,900.)
Your homeownership status comes into play because certain incentives require you to be a homeowner – or really only make financial sense for a homeowner. For example, tenants may not want to pay for new electrical panels or geothermal heating systems, so the calculator ignores incentives for these types of items.
Remember to take the calculator results with a grain of salt before diving into them. It collects only a few pieces of information about your specific income and tax situation, so it can only give you a rough idea of ​​your eligibility for benefits and how much they can save you. The government agencies implementing these incentive programs have not actually developed them either. But the calculator results are still a good starting point.
Ready to see the calculator in action? Imagine a couple with two children planning a major climate-friendly home upgrade: solar panels on the roof, electric cars in the garage, and new appliances to replace aging fossil-fuel versions. They live in Minneapolis with zip code 55412. Let’s look at a few scenarios that change their household income and their property or rent.
First, we will give the family $63,900 of income. They are considered low-income households, with other four-person households in the zip code earning up to $89,400, or 80 percent of the area’s median income. The couple own their own home. By entering their details into the calculator, we found that the family was eligible for all of the incentives calculated by the calculator.
Calculators show that families could save $14,000 in prepaid discounts if they took advantage of these benefits, which will be available over the next 10 years. Based on the calculator’s assessment of their tax liability, they can save an additional $4,149 in tax credit. The calculator also gives an estimate of how much energy households can save each year based on their state’s home type, fuel, and more: $1,150 in this case.