Founded in 2020, Rewiring America is the nation’s leading nonprofit for helping Americans electrify their homes. Their task is a challenging one. Electrification can be a confusing endeavor, with homeowners often left on their own to figure out what to electrify first, when to do it, how to get started and what financial incentives they’re eligible for.
Fortunately, Rewiring America has built various online tools to make the process as easy as possible. In this Q&A, Rewiring America’s Cora Wyent, senior director of research; Sarah Lazarovic, vice president for communications; and Quentin Barber, senior product manager, walk Grid through answers to the essential questions. Responses are from a series of interviews, edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start with the elephant in the White House, President Donald Trump. Many are worried about a rollback in policies impacting home electrification. How could his presidency impact this space? Obviously, we want market certainty. We don’t want things [like federal incentives] to get stripped away. There was a letter in August 2024, signed by 18 House Republicans, to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, saying, you know, “Keep federal clean energy tax credits because money has poured into [our states].” So we’re hoping good sense prevails. We’re trying not to speculate.
But, we look at our strategy, and nothing changes either way. It’s still, how can we help households? At the end of the day you still have to rip out your gas machines when the time comes. And we know it’s a story of affordability over time. There are upfront costs and operating costs to electrification, and whether you’re breaking even in year two or year four, you’re saving money.
Why is electrification important? One stat we really like to use is that 42% of energy-related emissions in the U.S. come from kitchen table decisions. So that’s how we heat our air, heat our water, cook our food, dry our clothes and how we get around. That’s a huge chunk of the emissions pie. So home electrification is really one of the most impactful things that an individual can do, if they have the resources and time to make the decision to upgrade.
We also like to talk about the “four C’s” of why you might go electric. The first is climate. But the second is comfort. Just the fact that so many of these technologies are better than the fossil fuel versions. An induction stove cooks food more quickly, it’s easier to clean, you get less waste heat in your kitchen. A heat pump keeps your home at a more consistent temperature.
The third C is cost. A lot of these electric appliances can actually save you money on your energy bills. An EV is a great example, where the average household would save over $1,000 a year. If you currently heat your home with fuel oil, propane or electric resistance, you can save hundreds or even thousands a year.
The fourth C is community, and that’s really that these electric appliances have benefits that go beyond your home. [Fossil fuel combustion] releases pollutants, making air quality worse for your whole community. By switching to electric there are benefits related to air quality and health, and also creating good jobs.
What can be electrified in a home? When we talk about electrification, what that means is taking anything that uses fossil fuels inside your home and switching to something that runs on electricity. And as the grid gets cleaner, eventually all of those things that run on electricity will become zero emissions. There are five big switches that we like to talk about. There’s switching your heating and cooling to a heat pump, which is a machine that can do both. There is switching your water heater to a heat pump water heater, switching your cooking to an electric or induction stove, making sure your clothes dryer is electric — which in most cases they already are — and switching your driving to an EV or e-bike, basically electrifying your means of transportation.
Many of these electric appliances cost more than their fossil fuel counterparts. Any advice for the cost-conscious? For people who don’t have a ton of resources, the approach we like to advocate is, “when it dies, electrify.” So when your current stove dies, upgrade to an electric stove. When your AC or furnace dies, upgrade to a heat pump. That makes it a lot more manageable and digestible. We don’t need to do this all at once. It’s really just about being prepared and making the right decision when your current machine dies.
On our website, we have a tool called the Personal Electrification Planner. You can enter your address, enter some information about your home, and then you get a personalized list of the upgrades and a step-by-step guide to making those upgrades. You’ll get sort of an order on what you should do first, second, third. It also has estimates of what it might cost, what the savings might be, and what the emissions impact will be. We highly recommend people use that planner as a way of preparing to make the right decisions, especially when you have a device that’s close to the end of its life.
And for low-income homeowners, you might look into what financing is available to you. In a lot of cases, your local credit union or government programs might offer low interest rate financing for doing green home upgrades. So if you see bill savings year over year, they may be greater than what your loan payment would be.
How difficult is it to file paperwork to receive the incentives? On the tax credits, it’s a pretty straightforward form that when you’re filing your taxes, it just asks if you’ve gotten any energy-efficient upgrades. When I did my taxes through TurboTax, it even prompted me; it asked me if I’d gotten any energy-efficient upgrades and then sent me to that form. It asked, what did you spend? When did you spend it?
In the next year or so, there will be some standards that heat pumps have to meet to qualify for the tax credits, and they’re trying to make that as simple as possible, so it’s just a single product PIN that you would enter on your tax form.
For the rebates it’s going to vary state by state.
Any advice for renters? It’s definitely challenging for a renter to electrify on their own. Focus on what you can control. So for example, getting that induction hot plate, you can basically put it on your stove and use it to cook instead of a gas stove. That has the climate benefits, but also a lot of benefits for your health and indoor air quality, because you’re not releasing really harmful gas stove pollutants into your air. There are similar portable devices, like portable heat pumps that are a really cool technology.
You can always try talking to your landlord, too, particularly if you know you have an appliance that’s about to go and they’re considering upgrading to a new one. We have a guide on our website about how to talk to your landlord about electrification, with a sample letter.
