New Jersey SmartStart Buildings - New Construction and Retrofits
Administered by New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, Office of Clean Energy
NOTE: This program serves non-residential customers only—it is not available to homeowners. If you operate a commercial, industrial, institutional, government, or agricultural facility in a participating New Jersey utility's service territory, you may qualify for rebates on energy-efficient equipment like HVAC systems, heat pumps, lighting, chillers, and other measures. To apply, contact your utility (such as PSE&G, FirstEnergy/JCP&L, or NJ Natural Gas) directly; the program closes to new applications on October 31, 2025, after which a successor New Construction Program will handle ongoing incentives.
SmartStart Buildings offers both prescriptive rebates with fixed incentive amounts for standard equipment categories and custom incentives for non-standard or complex systems—allowing you to structure projects flexibly with transparent, well-established incentive levels for technologies like geothermal heat pumps, HVAC, compressed air, and food service equipment. Your customers must be non-residential utility ratepayers who have contributed to the Societal Benefits Charge, must own the equipment outright after purchase, and cannot have procured the same measures through other Clean Energy Program offerings. Applications close October 31, 2025, so interested customers should move quickly.
New Jersey SmartStart Buildings is funded via the Societal Benefits Charge and administered by the Board of Public Utilities across seven participating utilities, serving commercial, industrial, institutional, government, and agricultural sectors. The program uses a tiered incentive structure: prescriptive rebates with fixed dollar amounts for established technologies (HVAC, lighting, chillers, heat pumps, geothermal, compressed air, and agricultural equipment) and custom incentives for specialized or non-standard measures pending approval. Program closes October 31, 2025; a successor New Construction Program launched May 1, 2025. Customers must be rate-payers of participating utilities and own equipment directly—synchronization with other state Clean Energy Program offerings is required to prevent double-incentivization.
Program details
- Program ID
- 2359
- Last updated
- 7/25/2025
Eligibility
- Sectors
- commercial industrial local government nonprofit schools state government federal government agricultural institutional
- Technologies
- geothermal heat pumps lighting chillers heat pumps compressed air agricultural equipment custom/others pending approval food service equipment hvac
Program summary
This program will close to new applications on October 31, 2025. Its successor, the New Construction Program, opened on May 1, 2025.
New Jersey SmartStart Buildings is a program sponsored by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. New Jersey SmartStart Buildings receives its funding through New Jersey's Societal Benefits Charge (SBC). The incentive offering is comprised of a combination of prescriptive equipment rebates and incentives for custom improvements that provide energy savings.
Eligibility
The incentives provided through this program are available to non-residential retail electric and/or gas service customers of the participating New Jersey utilities: Atlantic City Electric, FirstEnergy/Jersey Central Power & Light, New Jersey Natural Gas, Elizabethtown Gas, Public Service Electric and Gas, Rockland Electric Company, and South Jersey Gas.
Projects located in areas where electricity is provided by a municipal utility are eligible for only those portions of the program that address the energy efficiency of natural gas equipment if it is provided by a participating gas utility.
Energy efficient measures must be installed in buildings located within a New Jersey Utilities’ service territory and designated on the customer’s application. The customer must ultimately own the equipment, through an up-front purchase. Equipment procured by the customer via another program offered by New Jersey’s Clean Energy Program or the New Jersey Utilities, as applicable, are not eligible for incentives through this program. Customers who have not contributed to the SBC of the applicable New Jersey Utility are not eligible for incentives offered from the program.
Program Description
New Jersey SmartStart Buildings® is a statewide energy efficiency program available to qualified commercial, industrial, institutional, governmental, or agricultural customers planning to construct, expand, renovate, remodel a facility. Incentives are available for New Construction prescriptive measures
and are incentives where dollar amounts are fixed for specific categories of equipment. The prescriptive applications are labeled by technology, such as lighting and HVAC, and defined as equipment most recommended for energy-efficient projects with well-established energy savings.Custom Incentives are offered for non-standard equipment, complex systems, and specialized technologies that are not addressed through prescriptive offerings. Customers are provided a discrete, flexible application process with the ability to submit one or multiple applications for any size project. The transparency of incentives aids customers in making informed decisions while assisting energy efficiency professionals to better solicit a prospective project.
Routinely, the Program adds, removes, or modifies prescriptive incentives for various energy efficiency equipment based on national and local market trends, the development of new technologies, and changes in efficiency baselines. Note that on March 1, 2020, the State of New Jersey adopted the ASHRAE 90.1- 2016 energy code for all commercial and industrial building
Contact & resources
- Contact email
- contactus@NJCleanEnergy.com
- Additional resources
Please verify current program details with the administering agency before making any financial decisions.
