The Inflation Reduction Act — the largest US investment in the clean energy economy in history — is designed to get money directly to American households that need home energy upgrades. There are numerous grants, financing, and direct incentive funds that will help families make their homes more energy-efficient, affordable, and healthy. And thanks to months of hard work by federal agencies to stand up a new incentive program framework, the time has arrived for state energy offices to take the baton and enact transformational change. But we’re just at the starting line.

These next steps are critical to ensure households and contractors can easily access and navigate the billions of dollars available for home upgrades. Intentional program design that provides households access to incentives for every part of a whole-home retrofit will be fundamental to success. Whole-home retrofits include health and safety repairs, energy efficiency upgrades, all-electric appliances, and renewable energy installations like rooftop solar. To ensure households are leveraging every dollar available to reduce upfront and total costs, states must design their programs to be easy for residents to stack incentives.