Blog Code and Compliance
Minnesota Insulation Rebates and Energy Savings: What You Can Claim Right Now
Board down, tubing tied, forms set. Ready for concrete.
Checked 30 September 2026. Rebate programs move, and a lot of what is written about them online is out of date. Every figure below is dated so you can tell how much to trust it. If you are reading this months later, verify before you spend anything.
The short version
| Program | Status today | Worth |
|---|---|---|
| Federal tax credit (25C) | Ended 31 Dec 2025 | Nothing for 2026 work |
| Save Energy Minnesota (HOMES and HEAR) | Not launched | Unknown, and not retroactive |
| Minnesota Power energy analysis | Open through 31 Dec 2026 | $100 or $200 |
| Minnesota Power Insulate and Save Kit | Open through 31 Dec 2026 | Free |
| Weatherization Assistance Program | Open, income qualified | Varies |
The federal tax credit is gone
This is the part most sites still have wrong. Section 25C, the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit, paid 30 percent of insulation and air sealing costs up to $1,200 a year. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed 4 July 2025, repealed it for anything placed in service after 31 December 2025, roughly seven years ahead of its original schedule.
What that means in plain terms: insulation you install in 2026 does not qualify for a federal credit. If you did the work in 2025 or earlier, you can still claim it on your 2025 return.
Pages telling you to claim 25C for a 2026 project were written before the law changed and nobody went back to fix them. Check the date on anything you read about this, including this page.
Minnesota’s rebates have not started yet
Minnesota’s share of the federal Home Efficiency Rebates and Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates will be administered by the Department of Commerce under the name Save Energy Minnesota. Insulation and air sealing are expected to be covered.
As of the Commerce Department’s update dated 12 June 2026, the program had not launched. It is waiting on approval from the US Department of Energy and there is no estimated launch date.
The detail that matters more than the launch date: these rebates are not paid retroactively. Work finished before the program opens does not qualify. So if a rebate is the deciding factor for you, waiting is the rational move. If your floors are cold now and you are going to insulate anyway, the rebate was never the reason.
What you can get in Duluth today
Advanced Home Energy Analysis, $100 or $200
Minnesota Power will rebate an energy audit that includes blower door testing and an infrared scan. It is $100 for a home that is not electrically heated and $200 for one that is, available through 31 December 2026. Customer programs is 218-355-2843.
This is the one to do first, because it tells you where the heat is going instead of leaving you to guess. We wrote up what an audit finds in a Duluth house and what the numbers mean against Minnesota code.
Insulate and Save Kit, free
Less well known and genuinely free. Minnesota Power customers with electric heat can request a kit containing a door sweep, foam gaskets for outlets and switches, a window insulation kit and adhesive weather stripping. One kit per household every two years, available through 31 December 2026 while supplies last, arriving in six to eight weeks. The request form uses the event code INSULATEKIT.
It will not insulate a wall. It will close the small leaks that air sealing depends on, which is the cheapest useful thing on this page.
Weatherization Assistance
Income qualified households can get insulation and air sealing work done through Minnesota’s Weatherization Assistance Program and Energy Assistance Program, applied for through local service providers listed at mn.gov/commerce. Worth checking before assuming you do not qualify, because the income ceilings are higher than most people expect.
What insulation saves on its own
Rebates come and go. The heating bill does not. Set the numbers below to match your own house.
Estimator
What would more insulation save you?
Set the numbers to match your own house. Everything updates as you type.
Estimate only. Area × degree days × 24 × (1/R old − 1/R new), divided by furnace efficiency. Duluth’s heating degree day normal of 9,444 is the National Weather Service 1981–2010 figure; change it if you are building elsewhere. The default gas price is close to the Minnesota residential average and your own bill is a better number. This ignores air leakage and thermal bridging, so treat it as the order of magnitude rather than a quote.
Two things worth noticing when you play with it. Going from nothing to a little is worth far more than going from a lot to slightly more, because the saving follows the difference between one divided by each R-value rather than the R-values themselves. And the area matters as much as the R, which is why a large cold wall is usually a better target than a small one.
Where the money goes furthest
An audit will give you your own priority list. The pattern in older Duluth houses is consistent enough to name:
Air sealing first. Attic hatches, recessed lights, plumbing and wiring penetrations, the top plate. Insulation does not stop air, and insulating a leaky assembly buys less than the calculator suggests.
The rim joist. The band of framing on top of your foundation wall. Usually uninsulated, usually leaky, cheap to fix.
Thermal bridging through the framing. Cavity insulation cannot cover the studs, so the framing conducts heat straight through the wall. That is the job continuous exterior insulation does, and we went into why it is more than an R-value in a separate post.
Below grade and the slab. Foundation walls, slab edge and under slab insulation need a board that holds its R-value when wet and takes backfill. On a new build, frost protection is the same decision made before the pour rather than after.
What to do this week
Book the audit and claim the rebate before 31 December. Request the free kit if you heat with electricity. Do the air sealing the audit finds. Then insulate the assembly with the worst numbers, and if a Minnesota rebate is the deciding factor on a large job, wait for Save Energy Minnesota to open rather than assuming it will pay you back.
If the report calls for rigid board, tell us the assembly and the R-value and we will tell you the thickness and what it costs. If it calls for something we do not make, we will say so.
