Energy Star Windows in NJ (2026): The Tax Credit Is Gone

Section 25C is the credit every window company advertised from 2023 through 2025. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Public Law 119-21, signed July 4, 2025) struck the 2032 expiration date out of the statute and substituted December 31, 2025. The current text of 26 U.S.C. §25C(i) is one sentence: the section "shall not apply with respect to any property placed in service after December 31, 2025." The IRS says the same thing in plain language — the credit will not be allowed for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025 — and the 2025 Form 5695 instructions repeat it to filers.

The deadline was "placed in service" — not signed, not paid, not ordered. Placed in service means the installation is finished. Sign in November 2025, pay a deposit in December, install the second week of January 2026, and you get nothing. The statute provides no safe harbor, no transition rule and no partial credit for money already spent. Check your own completion date against it.

Section 25D is not a fallback. The Residential Clean Energy Credit was terminated on the same schedule — no expenditures after December 31, 2025 — and it never covered windows anyway. The IRS list for 25D is solar electric panels, solar water heaters, wind turbines, geothermal heat pumps, fuel cells and battery storage. Windows have never been on it. And the IRS has addressed the pay-in-2025-install-in-2026 question for 25D directly: an expenditure is treated as made when the original installation is completed, so completing installation after December 31, 2025 kills the claim. Anyone offering 25D as a workaround for a 2026 window job is making it up.

The repeal does not reach backward. Windows placed in service by December 31, 2025 are claimed on the 2025 Form 5695 with your 2025 return. The rules that governed that install, in the past tense because they apply to nothing new:

If the windows were finished in 2025 and the credit never made it onto the return, it is recoverable. The IRS says that generally, to claim a refund, you must file an amended return within three years after the date you filed the original return, or two years after the date you paid the tax, whichever is later. That is comfortable runway — but it is a conversation with your tax preparer, not with a window contractor.

What to hand them: the invoice with product cost broken out from labor, photos of the NFRC and ENERGY STAR labels for the exact models, the manufacturer's QMID, and proof of the completion date — the final inspection sign-off or certificate of completion. The completion date governs, so make sure it is on paper.

If your install landed exactly on December 31, 2025, you are inside the deadline. The statute terminates the credit for property placed in service *after* that date. The 2025 Form 5695 instructions use the same wording. The IRS's own guidance on the law change says the credit will not be allowed for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025. And the IRS's Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit page opens by telling you that you can claim the credit for improvements made *through* December 31, 2025 — then, a few lines down, words it as *before* December 31, 2025. That is an inconsistency on one web page, not an ambiguity in the law. Bring the completion date to your preparer either way, but a December 31 finish is not the problem it looks like.

You will still find 30% and $600 quoted for 2026 jobs on contractor pages, tax-prep blogs and comparison sites. Some of that is carelessness. What surprises people is that stale government pages are part of the problem. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities incentives page still advertises the credit for "2023-2032 Tax Years," including "Windows, including skylights: 30% of cost, up to $600," with no repeal notice on it. Even an IRS fact sheet on the 25C rules — the same document that spells out the manufacturer identifier requirement, and still the right source for that — carries a background line saying the credit is allowed for property placed in service before January 1, 2033, because it was written in January 2025, six months before the law changed.

A short list of sources reflects the law as it actually stands: the text of 26 U.S.C. §25C, the IRS fact sheet on the One Big Beautiful Bill changes, the IRS Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit page, and the 2025 Form 5695 instructions. When a number is worth thousands of dollars, that is the tier of source it should come from.

A filter for any 2026 quote: if the proposal carries a tax credit line, ask the salesperson to show you the IRS page behind it. There isn't one.

The plain version, in writing: no New Jersey rebate pays for replacement windows. Not PSE&G, not JCP&L, not Atlantic City Electric, not Rockland Electric, and no statewide rebate either. Windows appear in the current residential program lists in exactly two ways — as an item the auditor inspects for air leakage, and as *weather stripping of existing windows and doors* in the income-qualified weatherization programs. Weather stripping, not replacement. There is one New Jersey program that does replace windows, covered further down, and it is not a rebate.

These programs do move real money, just toward other measures. New Jersey's whole-home programs are performance-based: a BPI-certified contractor runs an assessment, models the savings, and the incentive follows a package of air sealing, insulation, ducts, HVAC and water heating. In practice that model rewards air sealing and insulation, which is why windows sit outside these programs rather than inside them.

If you are thinking of waiting for a better deal: on July 15, 2026 the NJBPU approved a one-year Energy Efficiency Transition Plan covering July 1, 2027 through June 30, 2028 that cuts utility energy-efficiency program spending by 28 percent, citing more than $531 million in avoided utility costs during the next ten years. The Board states that income-eligible families will continue to receive robust energy efficiency services at no cost. The announcement names no window measure.

New Jersey Comfort Partners serves households with income at or below 250% of the federal poverty guidelines. Not 400%. This page published 400% until this update, along with a claim that it was a meaningful expansion from a prior 200% threshold; no primary source documents any such threshold or any such change, and we should not have published it.

The 400% figure is a real New Jersey number attached to a different program: PSE&G Home Weatherization, which serves the band *above* 250% and below 400% of the federal poverty levels.

Comfort Partners is also not any one utility's program, despite the marketing. It is a statewide Board of Public Utilities program delivered through the participating electric and gas utilities: Atlantic City Electric, Elizabethtown Gas, JCP&L, New Jersey Natural Gas, PSE&G, Rockland Electric and South Jersey Gas.

The state's own page carries conditions the marketing usually drops. The program is for a household with significant energy use at or below 250%. You must use the home as your primary residence and be the ratepayer of record with a participating electric or gas utility. The building — house, apartment, townhome — must have no more than 14 individually metered units; buildings above 14 units are not eligible. Households that do not meet the income guidelines but receive aid from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, Section 8 Housing, SNAP, federal Supplemental Security Income or General Assistance may still be eligible, which is not the same as an automatic pass — expect to document it.

If your primary source of heat is oil, propane or kerosene, Comfort Partners is not your door. The state directs those households to the NJ Department of Community Affairs, Office of Weatherization instead. Worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on the application.

What it installs, per the state: efficient lighting products; hot water conservation measures including water heater and pipe insulation, energy-saving showerheads and aerators; replacement of inefficient refrigerators; thermostats; insulation upgrades to attic and walls; air sealing; and other measures determined home by home, plus personalized energy education and counseling. Window replacement is not on the list.

2026 income limits, at or below 250% of the federal poverty guidelines:

The New Jersey Weatherization Assistance Program, run by the Department of Community Affairs through county agencies, is the only program in the state that names windows as a covered measure — its materials list "installation of energy-efficient measures such as insulation, windows, and doors" and "installation of storm windows and doors."

Three things to understand. Eligibility runs at 200% of the federal poverty guidelines — DCA's 2026 sheet, effective January 15, 2026, puts that at $66,000 for a household of four — which is tighter than Comfort Partners, with categorical routes through NJ SNAP, WorkFirst NJ, SSI, LIHEAP and adoption subsidy. It is federally funded work delivered at no cost by designated county weatherization agencies, not a rebate a private contractor can bill against; we are not a WAP provider and cannot get you into it. And it is the one program on this page open to renters — DCA says the program is also available for renters if the landlord agrees to participate and allows the installation of energy-efficient measures. Every utility program above requires you to be the customer of record, and the whole-home programs require you to own the house.

Whether windows actually get replaced in a given house depends on what the energy audit justifies, which is the agency's call. If you are income-eligible, start with NJ DCA and your county agency — Bergen County runs through Greater Bergen Community Action — before collecting retail window quotes.

The Department of Energy's Home Energy Rebates get named constantly in the same breath as the dead credit. Neither track is available in New Jersey, and neither is a window rebate — but the two tracks are wrong for different reasons, and it is worth being precise.

The Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates track has a defined measure list: insulation, air sealing, ventilation, electric wiring and load service center upgrades, electric heating and cooling upgrades, and efficient electric appliances. Windows are not on it. The Home Efficiency Rebates track works differently — it pays against modeled whole-home energy savings rather than a closed product list, and DOE's own guidance for that track describes building envelope improvements as including upgrading doors and windows to higher performance models. So window work is not categorically excluded there. It has to earn its place inside a package that clears the savings threshold, and DOE notes that sealing leaks and improving insulation are typically the lowest-cost way to reach it.

None of which helps a New Jersey homeowner today, because nothing here is live. New Jersey has been awarded DOE funding, and the two programs the BPU has described are M-RISE — an anticipated start-up program supporting whole-building energy efficiency projects for low-income multifamily homes — and CP-HEAR, an anticipated electrification adder to Comfort Partners. Neither is a single-family window rebate. DOE says the Home Energy Rebates are now available in select states and does not name New Jersey. And DOE Program Notice 26-2, effective May 29, 2026, rewrote the electrification rules: it removed fuel-switching allowances, required homes to use rebates for insulation and air sealing before installing heating and cooling upgrades unless they are already appropriately insulated and sealed to a DOE-approved, state-specified level, and required grantee programs that have not yet launched to align with the new requirements before launching. New Jersey's have not launched. Nobody can honestly give you a date.

With 25C repealed, ENERGY STAR Most Efficient no longer unlocks money. It is now purely a performance tier. What matters is the two numbers on the NFRC label — U-factor, which is heat loss and where lower is better, and SHGC, which is solar heat gain and where the right target depends on your zone.

New Jersey is split across two ENERGY STAR climate zones, and the split is not the north/south line most sites publish. ENERGY STAR zones are also a different system from IECC code climate zones, which use confusingly similar names; plenty of window pages mash the two together.

The certified criteria above are Version 7.0, which the specification says takes effect October 23, 2023. If you see U ≤ 0.27 or U ≤ 0.30 described as the ENERGY STAR threshold for New Jersey, those are retired Version 6.0 numbers. Confirm your own county on the ENERGY STAR Climate Zone Finder before you sign a spec.

Then read the NFRC label on the delivered unit instead of trusting a product line name. Qualification is per model and per zone — the same series can qualify in one glass and spacer configuration and miss in another. Photograph every label before the temporary sticker comes off during cleanup. That habit was worth money under the old credit; it is still worth it as proof of what you bought.

Separately from ENERGY STAR, New Jersey's adopted energy subcode sets a legal maximum U-factor for replacement fenestration, with an area-weighted average permitted across multiple units. Ask your contractor or your building department for the figure currently adopted in New Jersey — it is not a number to take off a sales brochure, and it is the one spec on your job that is not optional.

The honest case for replacing windows never rested on the credit, and losing it changes the arithmetic less than the marketing implies — $600 was never the reason to replace a house full of windows. What the EPA actually publishes, with the qualifiers left intact:

Going from single-pane, or from clear dual-pane with no Low-E, to ENERGY STAR certified product is the upgrade with a genuine return — that is the "poor performing windows" case those EPA figures describe. Going from decent Low-E argon dual-pane to triple-pane Most Efficient is a comfort and sound upgrade, not an energy-payback one; in our experience quoting this work in North Jersey, the upcharge routinely outlives the payback period in this climate. Now that Most Efficient buys no credit, there is even less reason to spec it on energy math alone.

There is no state credit to fall back on either. New Jersey has no state income tax credit for residential window replacement. The state's historic credit — the Historic Property Reinvestment Program, administered by NJEDA — is for income-producing property, and residential projects must contain at least four dwelling units. A single-family homeowner cannot claim it, whatever a restoration-window salesperson says.

Practical, in order: