When Energy Upgrades Cost $0: Why Access to Incentives Matters

Maria’s story—and the bigger problem we are trying to solve

A recent KQED story about Maria Franco, a 65-year-old resident of a mobile home community in Los Angeles, illustrates something that is easy to overlook when we talk about the clean-energy transition:

The technology is only part of the solution. Access is just as important.

Maria had already been dealing with significant financial challenges after losing her longtime job. Then her water heater failed.

For a while, she had to heat water on her stove and carry it to the bathroom so she could take a shower.

At the same time, the San Fernando Valley summer heat made her home increasingly uncomfortable. Her cooling options were limited to a fan and a partially functioning window air-conditioning unit.

Then a contractor came to her door with an unexpected offer: a new water heater and an HVAC system capable of both heating and cooling her home.

Maria's cost: absolutely nothing.

That sentence is what caught our attention at Home Incentives Hub (HiH).

The money is there. Finding it is the challenge.

Across the United States, governments, utilities, and other organizations offer incentives to help homeowners, multifamily properties, nonprofits, commercial buildings, and other property owners make energy and building improvements.

These programs can help support projects such as:

• Heating and cooling upgrades

• Heat pumps and efficient HVAC systems

• Water heaters

• Insulation and weatherization

• Energy-efficiency improvements

• Electrification

• Solar and battery storage

• Building decarbonization

• Indoor air quality improvements

• Resilience upgrades

• And many other measures

But having an incentive available doesn't necessarily mean that someone who needs it will find it.

Programs can have different eligibility requirements, deadlines, income thresholds, geographic restrictions, technology requirements, application processes, and funding structures.

For an individual homeowner, figuring all of this out can be overwhelming.

For a property owner or building manager trying to evaluate multiple projects, it can become even more complicated.

Incentives shouldn't be a hidden resource

This is the problem we are building Home Incentives Hub to address.

Our vision is to make incentives easier to discover and understand by connecting a property's characteristics and planned improvements with programs that may help fund those improvements.

Instead of asking:

"I know I need a new HVAC system. Now where do I find the money?"

We want people to be able to start with:

"Here is my home or building. What incentives might be available to help me improve it?"

That shift matters.

Because the right incentive can change the economics of a project completely.

A project that might otherwise be postponed because it is too expensive can become affordable.

A building upgrade that seems financially unattractive can become viable.

And, as Maria's story demonstrates, an energy upgrade can mean much more than lower energy consumption. It can mean hot water, comfortable temperatures, better living conditions, and dignity.

From individual homes to entire buildings

Our mission extends beyond individual homeowners.

Millions of housing units and commercial buildings across the country face aging equipment, rising energy costs, climate risks, and increasingly complex building requirements.

Property owners and managers are being asked to make difficult decisions:

Which upgrades should we make? When should we make them? What will they cost? And what incentives are available to reduce that cost?

These questions become particularly important for multifamily and commercial properties, where a single project can involve substantial capital and multiple stakeholders.

Understanding incentives early—before making a capital investment decision—can potentially change which projects make financial sense.

That's why we believe incentive discovery should be part of the building decision-making process, not an afterthought.

Technology can help close the information gap

At Home Incentives Hub, we are building an AI-powered platform designed to make the incentive landscape easier to navigate.

Our goal is not simply to create another database of programs.

It's to help people move from:

"There might be funding somewhere."

to:

"These are the programs that may apply to my project, here's why, and here's what I need to do next."

Over time, we envision HiH helping streamline not only incentive discovery, but also the process of applying for and accessing those incentives.

The clean-energy transition has to be inclusive

There is a tendency to talk about the clean-energy transition primarily in terms of technologies: heat pumps, solar panels, batteries, efficient buildings, electrification and decarbonization.

But technology alone doesn't create a successful transition.

People need to be able to access it.

The people who could benefit most from an incentive may have the least time, money, or expertise available to search through dozens of programs and determine which ones apply to them.

That's why stories like Maria's matter.

Her story shows what can happen when the right person connects a household with the right solution and the right funding.

Imagine making that connection easier for millions more people.

Why we are building HiH

Home Incentives Hub was created around a simple belief:

If billions of dollars are available to improve our homes and buildings, finding the money shouldn't be harder than doing the project itself.

We want to help make incentives more accessible, understandable, and actionable—for homeowners, building owners, property managers, and the communities they serve.

Maria's story is one example.

There are millions of other homes and buildings that may be waiting for their own opportunity.

Our job is to help them find it.

Home Incentives Hub is building technology to make building incentives easier to discover and navigate. Incentive availability and eligibility vary by program, location, property, and applicant.

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Source: KQED Science, Tackling affordability and extreme heat in LA’s mobile home parks, KQED.