Last verified against official sources: July 25, 2026.
If you have searched for a heat pump rebate, you have probably read that you can get up to $8,000. That number is real, but it is not a promise. Whether you can get it depends almost entirely on which state you live in, and as of July 2026 roughly half the states in this country are not paying it out at all yet.
This page is the map. It explains what the money actually is, who decides, and where each state stood on the day we last checked it against that state’s own website.
There is no single “home energy rebate”
What people call the home energy rebate is really a stack of separate programs that happen to pay for similar things.
- The federal tax credits (25C and 25D). These come off your federal income tax, you claim them yourself on IRS Form 5695, and they do not depend on your state. They are a credit, not cash at the register.
- HOMES, officially the Home Efficiency Rebates. Federal money from the Inflation Reduction Act, paid out by your state, based on how much energy your whole-home retrofit saves.
- HEAR, officially the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates. Also federal IRA money paid out by your state, but tied to specific equipment: heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, electrical panels, wiring, insulation.
- Your state’s own programs. Some states run rebates funded by state money that have nothing to do with the IRA. Washington’s state-level HEAR program is a well-known example, and its own page is explicit that it is a different thing from the federal HOMES program.
- Your utility’s rebates. Separate again, with its own rules, its own forms, and often its own contractor list.
The $8,000 figure almost always refers to HEAR, and HEAR is the one that varies most by state.
The federal government funds it. Your state decides everything else.
This is the part most rebate pages skip, and it is the reason so many people come away confused.
Congress appropriated the money. The U.S. Department of Energy administers it. But DOE does not send you a check. Each state energy office had to apply to DOE, get approved, design its own program, and then launch it. That means the income tiers, the equipment list, the maximum amounts, the contractor requirements, and the launch date are all state decisions.
So “is there a heat pump rebate” is not a federal question. It is a question about your state energy office.
Why so many state pages say “awaiting DOE approval”
If you visit five state energy office pages in a row, you will notice the same sentence keeps appearing in different words: the program cannot launch until DOE signs off. Pennsylvania’s environmental protection department put it plainly, saying it is awaiting final DOE approval to launch. Oregon went further and said DOE had paused approvals while it reviewed agency priorities. Minnesota said there is no estimated launch date at all.
There is a specific reason for this. On May 29, 2026, DOE issued two documents, Program Notice 26-1 for the Home Efficiency Rebates and Program Notice 26-2 for the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates. They removed the Justice40 requirement that had reserved forty percent of funds for low-income households, and they simplified the blueprint approval process states had to go through. They also did something larger that drew far less attention. Notice 26-2 removed fuel switching from the electrification rebate, so replacing a non-electric appliance with an electric one is no longer an allowed use of the money. See the update at the end of this article.
What the notices did not do is cancel any state’s program or cut the overall funding. That distinction matters, because the wave of “not yet available” language on state websites through 2026 is a symptom of a changed approval rhythm at DOE, not of a program being shut down. If your state’s page says it is waiting, waiting is the accurate reading.
Where each state stands
Below is what each state’s own website said the last time we checked it. Nineteen states are covered here; the rest are being added as we verify them one at a time. We do not fill gaps from third-party trackers, so if a state is missing it is because we have not read its official page yet, not because nothing is happening there.
Taking applications now
- Georgia. Fully launched March 31, 2025. As of an April 9, 2026 press release, the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority reported more than $25 million paid out to more than 1,900 households.
- North Carolina. Both programs launched January 2025, with paper applications accepted from March 1, 2025. The Department of Environmental Quality publishes an $8,000 maximum for an ENERGY STAR certified electric heat pump.
- Wisconsin. HOMES launched August 1, 2024. HEAR Phase 1 for contractor-installed equipment launched December 18, 2024, and Phase 2 for retail purchases in September 2025.
- Michigan. Both the HOMES and HEAR halves of the MiHER program are accepting applications through the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.
- New York. HEAR incentives only, delivered through the existing EmPower+ program, with $8,000 for an ENERGY STAR certified heat pump used as the primary heating source. NYSERDA’s own FAQ states this is currently the only IRA home energy rebate available in the state.
- Washington. The state-level HEAR program is open, with the Department of Commerce saying rebates are available. Note that this is a Washington program, and its page says so explicitly; it is not the federal HOMES program.
- Colorado, Region 2 only. See the section below on money running out.
- California, multifamily only. See the same section.
Piloting, or partially live
- Florida. The Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services describes a HEAR pilot expected to launch, with the full program expected early the following year. It publishes an $8,000 heat pump figure.
- Arizona. The Governor’s Office of Resiliency describes the program as aiming to start issuing rebates. It publishes $8,000 for an ENERGY STAR certified heat pump and $1,750 for a heat pump water heater.
- Illinois. HOMES is in a pilot stage with two local administering agencies and funding disbursed, awaiting final DOE approval. HEAR has not yet been processed by DOE for Illinois EPA to administer.
Announced, but not open yet
Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Minnesota, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts all had official pages saying their programs were not available. Maryland’s case is the furthest along of these: DOE has conditionally approved both of Maryland’s applications, but the Maryland Energy Administration says additional DOE approvals are still required before funding is received.
Could not verify
- Ohio. We could not find an Ohio state government page that states the launch status, the heat pump maximum, the income thresholds, or even which agency is responsible. Searching development.ohio.gov surfaced LIHEAP and other energy assistance programs, but no IRA HOMES or HEAR page. We are not going to guess. If you live in Ohio, calling the state energy office directly is currently more reliable than anything published online.
Two states where the money has already run out
This is the failure mode nobody warns you about. These programs are funded from a fixed pot, not an entitlement, and when the pot empties the program closes even though the rules on the page still describe you as eligible.
- California, single-family. The California Energy Commission states that as of February 24, 2026, HEEHRA rebates for single-family home retrofits are fully reserved statewide. Multifamily Phase I remains open. California publishes $8,000 for households at or below 80% of area median income, $4,000 for 80 to 150%, and up to $14,000 per unit for multifamily.
- Colorado, Region 1 (the Front Range). The Colorado Energy Office states that Region 1 is now closed, and that household applications and project proposals submitted after April 27, 2026 for Region 1 will not be reviewed. Region 2 was still accepting applications, scheduled to run until August 1, 2026 or until funds are exhausted, whichever comes first.
Across the nineteen states we verified, these are the only two official funding-exhaustion notices we found. Several other states have not launched yet, so the question does not arise for them.
If you are in a state that is currently open, the practical lesson is that the queue matters. A program that is open in July may not be open in October.
What the maximum heat pump rebate actually is
Where a state publishes a heat pump number on its own website, here is what it says.
- $8,000 for a qualifying heat pump: California (at or below 80% AMI), Florida, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and Arizona.
- Colorado splits it: $8,000 for a cold climate heat pump, $3,000 for a standard heat pump, $1,750 for a heat pump water heater, with a $14,000 total cap per household.
- Arizona also publishes $1,750 for a heat pump water heater.
- Georgia does not publish a single heat pump maximum. Its FAQ describes Home Efficiency Rebates of $2,000 to $4,000 for an individual home, and up to $400,000 for a multifamily building.
And here is the part other sites will not tell you. The following states have not published a heat pump specific maximum on their official pages at all: Texas, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Minnesota. Texas’s page lists $2,000 per year, but that is the 25C federal tax credit, not a HEAR rebate, and treating it as one is a mistake we have seen repeated on a lot of rebate sites.
If you see a confident dollar figure for one of those eight states, ask where it came from.
We took that question apart state by state, quoting each state’s own page and naming all eight of them: Is the $8,000 heat pump rebate real? What each state actually publishes.
The 80 percent and 150 percent lines
Most states that have published their income rules use the same two thresholds, measured against area median income for your county.
- At or below 80% of AMI, you generally get the full rebate.
- Between 80% and 150% of AMI, you generally get half.
- Above 150% of AMI, you generally do not qualify for HEAR at all, though HOMES is often open to all income levels with enhanced amounts for lower-income households.
California, Florida, North Carolina, and Colorado publish this structure clearly. Virginia publishes the 150% ceiling but not the tier percentages. Washington uses 150% of AMI based on HUD county data. Texas, New Jersey, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Arizona have not published tier percentages with the same clarity, and Massachusetts’s tiers come from a 2024 proposal document that we could not confirm was ever finalized.
Area median income is a county-level number, not a state-level one, so a household income that qualifies in one county can fail in the next county over.
Those two thresholds come from federal statute, not from any state, and they are applied differently in the two federal programs. We set out the exact statutory language, and what DOE does and does not publish about it, in the income rules behind the $14,000 rebate.
One more distinction matters before you read the state tables: the federal tax credit and the state rebate are not the same money, and only one of them ended. Section 25C stopped applying to property placed in service after December 31, 2025, while the rebate appropriation runs through September 30, 2031. We worked through both in The Heat Pump Tax Credit Ended. The Rebate Did Not..
Update: DOE removed fuel switching on May 29, 2026
This article was written before the Department of Energy issued Program Notices 26-1 and 26-2, both effective May 29, 2026. The notices removed fuel switching from the federal home electrification rebate: rebates now apply to upgrades from existing electric equipment to more efficient electric equipment, and replacing a non-electric appliance is no longer an allowed use of the money. Every state program described on this page is affected. Programs that have already launched have three months from publication to conform, and two states have published cutoffs inside that window, with Arizona asking applicants to apply by August 1, 2026 and Georgia refusing scopes of work after 10:00 am ET on August 10, 2026. The dollar ceilings written into statute did not change. Read the full account of the two notices and the state deadlines.
What we could not verify, stated plainly
- DOE no longer publishes a state-by-state status tracker. The page that used to live at energy.gov/scep/home-energy-rebates-program-status-state-applications returns a 404. We tried three times. DOE’s current program page says details on active state, territory or Tribal rebate programs are coming soon, which is DOE confirming that it does not currently publish this itself.
- The widely circulated fifty-state trackers are third-party work by think tanks and industry groups. They may well be accurate. They are not primary sources, and we did not use their numbers.
- Massachusetts is our least confident entry. The most recent official material we could locate is a 2024 straw proposal and public comment document. If you are in Massachusetts, check mass.gov directly rather than trusting this page.
- Several state pages carry no last-updated date at all, including Texas, Florida, Michigan, Arizona, New Jersey, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Where that is the case we have said so rather than inferring a date from a copyright footer.
How to check your own state in ten minutes
- Search for your state’s name plus “energy office” and open the result ending in .gov. Not the first result, the .gov one.
- Look for a page named Home Energy Rebates, HOMES, HEAR, or IRA rebates.
- Find the status sentence before you look at any dollar figure. Open, pilot, or waiting on DOE.
- If it is open, find the application portal and check whether funds are still available, not just whether the page exists.
- Check your county’s area median income, not your state’s.
- Then, and only then, call a contractor. Going in the other order is how people end up paying for equipment on the assumption of a rebate that is not available where they live.
We publish how we source our data and how this site makes money, because on this topic you should not take anyone’s numbers on faith, including ours.
Updated July 29, 2026: we opened the official rebate page for twenty-four states to see which ones have told homeowners that the rule changed. Only six mention it, and six more are open and still publishing the old rule.