Insulation Rebates and Incentives in Broome County, NY

Program amounts change. Check the live NYSERDA pages before relying on any number here, including ours.

Three programs a Broome County homeowner can realistically use. Two of them are worth real money. There is one catch that applies to all three and it is the thing nobody mentions until you are halfway through.

The catch, up front

All three require a NYSERDA participating contractor. Not a licensed contractor, not a certified one: a contractor who has gone through NYSERDA’s own approval process and appears on their list.

Your eligibility for the money depends on who you hire, not on what the work is. You can have exactly the right job done to exactly the right standard by a competent contractor who is not on the list, and receive nothing.

If the incentive matters to your budget, resolve this before you get attached to a contractor.

1. Comfort Home

The market-rate program. No income test surfaced in the program materials, which makes it the one most Broome County homeowners will use.

Package	Incentive	What it covers
Good	$2,500	Air sealing plus attic and rim joist insulation
Better	$3,000	The above plus wall and floor insulation
Windows add-on	$2,000	ENERGY STAR windows, after air sealing and insulation

Repeat participants can access a further $1,000 to $2,000 toward additional packages depending on how long it has been since their previous incentive.

NYSERDA’s stated savings, which are their figures and not ours: around 14% off heating and cooling for the Good package, around 20% for Better, around 8% additional for windows.

How to apply: create a MyEnergy portal account, check eligibility, and work with a participating Comfort Home contractor. Participating contractors provide a no-fee initial consultation.

NYSERDA Comfort Home Program

The program is material-agnostic, and that matters

Comfort Home pays for air sealing plus insulation at named locations. It does not specify spray foam, cellulose, or fiberglass. It is paying for the outcome.

The rational consequence is that the cheapest way to reach the outcome is the right choice, and for many houses that is a hybrid, foam as the air barrier where only foam works and cellulose over the top for depth. We say this on a foam contractor’s website because it is true and because the alternative is telling you to spend more than you need to in order to capture a fixed incentive, which is bad arithmetic.

2. EmPower+

The income-qualified program, and considerably more generous.

No-cost comprehensive home energy assessment for eligible households.
Low-income single-family: no-cost improvements capped at $12,000 per project upstate. Broome County is upstate.
Moderate-income single-family: 50% of cost covered, capped at $6,000 per project upstate.

Income thresholds vary by county and household size, and we are not going to publish them. They change annually and a stale number on a contractor’s site is worse than no number.

Worth checking even if you assume you will not qualify: median household income in the Greater Binghamton area is around $57,636, which puts a meaningful share of this market inside moderate-income eligibility.

How to apply: gather income and utility documentation, create a MyEnergy Portal profile, complete the application, wait for contractor assignment and a home energy assessment, then schedule work. Assistance line 866-NYSERDA.

NYSERDA EmPower+ · Eligibility guidelines

3. HEAR (Home Electrification and Appliance Rebate)

The federal Inflation Reduction Act rebate stream, administered in New York through NYSERDA.

Eligible households can access up to $1,600 for combined air sealing, insulation, and ventilation work.

Whether it stacks with the other two is program-specific and we are not going to guess. Ask NYSERDA or your participating contractor directly for your particular scope, because the answer depends on the measure and the household.

What is not covered

Drainage and waterproofing. These are energy efficiency programs. Even where drainage has to be resolved before insulation can happen, only the insulation portion is eligible.
Roofing. No NYSERDA program covers a roof. If you have seen something suggesting a state roof rebate, it was either about attic insulation, which is covered, or it was wrong.
Pole barns, detached garages, and outbuildings. These programs are for the dwelling. A workshop or barn insulation job is not eligible regardless of how much energy it saves.
Crawl space encapsulation, partly. The insulation and air sealing components are typically eligible; vapor barrier and drainage components may not be. Ask specifically about your scope.
Removal of existing material, structural repair, and remediation.

A realistic worked example

A Broome County homeowner, 2,000 square foot house, no income qualification, using a Comfort Home participating contractor:


Remove settled attic fiberglass, ~1,000 sq ft	~$1,000
Foam air barrier at the ceiling plane	~$2,500
Blown cellulose over the top to depth	~$1,400
Rim joist, closed-cell, ~44 bays	~$2,200
Permit, City of Binghamton	$75
Job total	~$7,175
Comfort Home “Good” package	–$2,500
Out of pocket	~$4,675

Cost figures are national installed-cost ranges applied to a worked example; incentive figures are NYSERDA’s published amounts.

Note that this scope is deliberately a hybrid rather than foam throughout, and it captures the full $2,500 because the program pays for the outcome rather than the material.

Five things to do before spending anything

Check the live NYSERDA pages. The amounts here were correct on 17 August 2026 and that is the honest limit of what anyone can say about them.
Create a MyEnergy portal account and run the eligibility check. Free, ten minutes.
Ask any contractor you are considering whether they are a NYSERDA participating contractor for the specific program. “We work with NYSERDA” is not the same answer as “we are a participating Comfort Home contractor.”
Do not let the incentive choose the scope. If your basement needs drainage first, no package changes that. Doing eligible work in the wrong order to capture a rebate is a bad trade.
Get the written scope regardless. New York requires any home improvement contract over $500 to be in writing with specified terms, and you have three business days to cancel.

What we can and cannot do

We can tell you which parts of your scope are typically eligible, and we can structure the written quote so the eligible portions are clearly separated, which makes an application straightforward.

We cannot promise you an incentive. Eligibility runs through NYSERDA, it depends on your household and on the participating status of whoever does the work, and no contractor controls the outcome. Anyone telling you otherwise is overreaching.

Get a written, itemized foam insulation quote.

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