What 2026 Means for Florida HVAC: Tax Credit Gone, Power Rates Up, Rebates in Limbo

If you’re facing an HVAC quote this summer in Florida, three things changed since the last time most homeowners had to think about this. All three changed in the same direction — away from you.

The federal tax credit is gone

The Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit — Section 25C, the one that gave you up to $2,000 back on a heat pump or $600 on a high-efficiency air conditioner — ended December 31, 2025. It was eliminated as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025.

If you installed qualifying equipment in 2025, you can still claim the credit on this year’s tax return. If you’re buying now, you can’t. The installation completion date is what counts — not the purchase date, not the signed contract, not when the equipment got delivered. If the install finishes in 2026, no credit.

There is no pending legislation to reinstate the credit. Some in the industry expected it to survive in some form. It didn’t.

This matters at the kitchen table for a specific reason: through most of 2025, contractor sales pitches leaned heavily on “buy before the credit expires.” That was a real argument at the time. It isn’t anymore. If a quote in front of you in 2026 mentions the federal credit as a current incentive, the person writing it is either out of date or hoping you are.

For a full breakdown of how the credit expiry changes the heat pump vs. straight-cool decision in Florida — including what it now costs to go heat pump without the subsidy — that article walks through the numbers.

Florida electricity rates are up 8%

Residential electricity in Florida averaged 15.86 cents per kilowatt-hour in February 2026, up from 14.68 cents one year earlier — an 8% increase, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

The math on a typical home: a household using around 1,200 kWh per month now pays roughly $190 a month, or about $2,284 a year, and cooling accounts for more than half of summer usage. The rate change alone adds roughly $170 a year to a Florida household’s bill before anyone considers equipment age or efficiency.

For a homeowner running a fifteen- or twenty-year-old system at SEER 10 or below, the gap between what that system draws and what a current high-efficiency unit would draw has gotten more expensive to keep open. Same usage pattern, higher cost per kilowatt-hour.

This doesn’t automatically tip the math toward replacement — system age, what failed, and refrigerant type still drive that decision. But the operating-cost side of the equation is heavier than it was twelve months ago. The repair-or-replace framework is the right starting point for working through where you land.

State rebates are in limbo

Florida’s situation on the federal HEAR (Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates) and HOMES programs has been the subject of conflicting reporting, and it’s worth understanding clearly because you may hear contractors quote rebate numbers that aren’t actually available.

What’s confirmed: Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services was allocated approximately $346 million in combined IRA funding for HEAR and HOMES. As of June 2026, neither program has launched — both are pending U.S. Department of Energy approval. FDACS is accepting registrations through its Florida Energy Saver Program, but no firm launch date has been published and no rebates have been paid out.

There’s a separate strand of reporting that Florida directed agencies to return IRA-allocated HEAR and HOMES funds in 2024, which would have eliminated access to up to $14,000 per household in HEAR rebates. The active FDACS portal complicates that account. The honest read as of this writing: the program exists on paper, registrations are open, payments haven’t started, and no one can promise when or whether they will.

If a contractor’s quote includes a Florida state rebate as a line-item discount today, treat that as a sales detail, not a real number. The rebate may eventually exist. It isn’t being paid this month.

Utility rebates are a different story — those are real and active. FPL, Duke Energy Florida, TECO, and JEA offer smart thermostat rebates of $75 to $100 and A/C efficiency rebates of $100 to $500 for qualifying installations. Smaller numbers than the federal credit was, but actually accessible.

The refrigerant transition is still pushing prices up

Worth mentioning alongside the rest because it’s still working through the market. New residential equipment built since January 2025 uses R-454B or R-32 instead of R-410A, per the AIM Act phase-down. Equipment costs on the new refrigerants are running noticeably higher than the R-410A units they replaced, and R-410A itself is climbing as production tapers off. If you have an R-22 system still in service, the same dynamic is further along — that refrigerant is reclaim-only now and runs $100 to $200 a pound.

The R-410A phaseout and refrigerant transition article covers what this means for existing systems, how to think about timing a replacement, and what contractors are likely to push on a quote for a system that still uses legacy refrigerant.

None of this is news in 2026 — it’s been the story for two years — but it’s the backdrop the other changes sit against. The price of a replacement system in Florida this summer is higher than it was in summer 2024 across the board.

What this means at the kitchen table

The net for a homeowner facing a quote in 2026:

• Federal credit savings that were available last year aren’t this year.
• Operating costs on your old system are higher than last year.
• New equipment is more expensive than it was two years ago.
• State rebates may exist on paper but aren’t being paid out yet.
• Utility rebates are smaller but real.

None of this changes the fundamentals of repair-versus-replace. System age, refrigerant type, what specifically failed, and the cost of the repair against the cost of replacement still drive the decision the way they always have. What has changed is the math around the edges and, more importantly, the sales pitch — the “buy now before X expires” version of the conversation doesn’t have the same force it did last year.

The pressure to sign tonight is still a sales tactic, not a real constraint. Equipment and labor will still be there in the morning at the same price. The 24-hour pause before signing any HVAC quote remains one of the most valuable habits a Florida HVAC buyer can adopt.

If you’re staring at a quote and want a framework to evaluate it against, the Quote Decoder Worksheet is calibrated for 2026 pricing — including the refrigerant transition and the changed credit landscape.