It pays to con­serve energy, lit­er­ally. State and fed­eral incen­tives and tax cred­its are avail­able to home­own­ers who make energy effi­cient home improve­ments. From Energy Star appli­ances to solar pan­els there are dozens of ways to make your home more energy effi­cient, help­ing you to save money (and the planet) every month.

Fed­eral Tax Credit
If you pur­chase an energy-efficient prod­uct or renew­able energy sys­tem for your home, you may be eli­gi­ble for a fed­eral tax credit. Fed­eral Tax Cred­its for Con­sumer Energy Effi­ciency typ­i­cally allow tax cred­its up to 30% of the cost up to $1500 for projects such as insu­la­tion, effi­cient win­dows and doors, and effi­cient heaters. Solar energy sys­tems, res­i­den­tial wind tur­bines, and geot­her­mal heat pumps have tax cred­its of 30% with no upper limit. Please see www.energystar.gov for details.

BGE Smart Energy Savers Pro­gram
BGE has a pro­gram to pro­vide res­i­dents with rebates for res­i­dents who get energy effi­cient upgrades on cer­tain appli­ances.  More infor­ma­tion can be found here.

BGE Peak Rewards
BGE’s Peak Rewards pro­gram is designed to help ease the “peak” demand for elec­tric­ity in the Mid-Atlantic region. If you have cen­tral air con­di­tion­ing or an elec­tric heat pump you can get up to $100 in bill cred­its plus a first year bonus and save even more by using a pro­gram­ma­ble thermostat.

BGE res­i­den­tial cus­tomers can choose either a pro­gram­ma­ble ther­mo­stat or a switch pro­fes­sion­ally installed. Then you agree to help ease high elec­tric­ity demand by allow­ing BGE to “cycle” your air con­di­tion­ing on and off from time to time, typ­i­cally dur­ing the sum­mer months when elec­tric­ity demand is at its peak. If you enroll, you choose which level you are com­fort­able with; 50%, 75%, or 100% cycling. The bill cred­its vary between each type of cycling you sign up for, rang­ing from $50 ($100 the first year) to $100 ($200 the first year).

Solar Energy Grant Pro­gram
The Mary­land Energy Admin­is­tra­tion oper­ates a Solar Energy Grant Pro­gram. The solar grants are avail­able
to res­i­den­tial, busi­ness, school and non­profit enti­ties, and can be used to off­set a por­tion of the cost of either solar elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tion or solar water heat­ing projects.

Green Build­ing Tax Credit
As an incen­tive to pro­mote green build­ing, Mary­land allows a green build­ing tax credit for busi­nesses that con­struct or reha­bil­i­tate a build­ing con­form­ing to spe­cific stan­dards intended to save energy and mit­i­gate envi­ron­men­tal impacts. Please visit the Mary­land Energy Admin­is­tra­tion web­site listed in the links below for more details about state tax cred­its. Howard County also offers tax cred­its for up to five years for high per­for­mance build­ings depend­ing on their LEED rat­ing and type of building.

Renew­able Energy Tax Credit

Howard County imple­mented a renew­able energy tax credit to jump start the indus­try in Howard County and cre­ate green jobs.  The 4 year pro­gram encour­aged home­own­ers to pur­chase and install solar and geot­her­mal energy sys­tems for their homes.  As the pro­gram winds down, all appli­cants who have already applied for the tax credit will receive their credit over the next 2 years (FY2012 and FY 2013).  Projects must be com­pleted and paper­work sub­mit­ted by April 1, 2012.