Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power - Maine
As federal home efficiency tax breaks expire, Maine moves ahead with its own incentives
Thankfully the tooth fairy pays for all of this.
Maine Public | By Peter McGuire
Published December 30, 2025 at 4:30 PM EST
EXCERPTS
Now Brown and other vendors are working hard to explain to confused consumers that even though the tax break is gone, there's still state money available to help with projects.
The Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit provided a $1,200 income tax benefit for certain upgrades, and that helped to defray homeowners costs, Brown said. But Efficiency Maine offers bigger rebates of up to $8,000 for insulation, she added.................
His agency is still processing thousands of rebate applications, Stoddard said. It will take some time before it becomes clear whether the slowdown is a blip, or if Efficiency Maine needs to change its marketing strategy to remind the public about available state rebates.
"Maine is continuing to do as well or better than any other state in the country when it comes to these kinds of home improvements and business improvements," Stoddard said.
"So I'm still pretty optimistic that we're going to see a lot of activity."......................
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Dan McKay
A quick, back of the envelope, computations reveal that the average electric customer of Maine, using 550 kwH per month has paid over $500 over the past 15 years to Efficiency Maine Trust. That's a lot of insulation.
It's even more than $500 because of the amount of money people have spent on RGGI, which is additional money that Efficiency Maine Trust receives.
Efficiency Maine Trust is a bloated bureaucracy hitting the average Maine electric customer very hard. It does not reduce energy costs for the majority of people, it raises costs. Abolish the money grabber. EMT.
yesterday
Long Islander
We've paid out that money and whatever we might have made on it if invested. Combine this with everything else we get clipped for and it really adds up. But each time some new charge is approved, we hear words like "It's ONLY $.37 a month", always stated in isolation without the context of all prior theft or ongoing theft such as Maine's refusal to mirror income adjustments in the federal Big Beautiful Bill.
yesterday