Smart Thermostats: A Brilliant Way to Lower Your Energy Bill

By Noor Malik, Building Decarbonization and Energy Policy Fellow, NYLCVEF

Picture a family in Flushing, Queens. Both parents work. In the summer, they keep the air conditioning off as long as they can because they are watching every dollar. By the time they finally turn it on, the bill still comes out to nearly ten percent of what they earn in a month. That is not unusual. It is, in fact, the norm for millions of low-income households across New York.

This month, as leaders, advocates, and stakeholders from around the globe gather in New York City for Climate Week, panels and headlines will circle familiar themes: emissions targets, the energy transition, the race to electrify everything from cars to buildings. Energy will rightly be front and center as an international concern. But we must keep in mind that it is also a kitchen table issue. It is about health, it is about affordability, and it is about climate, all at once, in the same household budget.

A household spending six percent or more of its income on energy is considered energy burdened. Across New York State, more than two million households meet that threshold. 

Fortunately, there are tools available that can help lower that burden. In fact, one of the simplest ways is by upgrading an item that’s sitting on the wall of nearly every home already: the thermostat. 

Meet the Smart Thermostat

A smart thermostat is a Wi-Fi connected device that learns a household’s schedule and adjusts heating and cooling automatically when no one is home. Residents can control it from their phone, and it saves money in two ways.

• Everyday efficiency. According to ENERGY STAR, smart thermostats save around eight percent on heating and cooling costs each year, just from smarter scheduling. In New York, that can mean $140 to $180 in savings a year for a typical household.
• Demand response payments. When a household enrolls, the utility can make small, temporary temperature adjustments during high-demand periods, such as a hot summer afternoon when the whole city is running its air conditioning at once. In exchange, the household gets paid an enrollment incentive and an annual bill credit.

A single household enrolled in a program like this can expect around $265 in total value in Year 1, and close to $985 over five years through rebates, demand response credits, and efficiency savings combined.

For income-qualified households, the savings can go even further. NYSERDA’s EmPower+ program offers up to $24,000 in total energy efficiency support across multiple home improvements, and a smart thermostat can serve as the entry point into that broader set of programs.

For the more than two million New York households currently carrying a high energy burden, the opportunity is significant. Lowering even a fraction of that burden, household by household, is exactly what stacking programs like these – an enrollment incentive, an annual bill credit, and deeper support through EmPower+ –  is designed to do.

Closing the Cost Gap

Even with these incentives, the upfront cost of a smart thermostat can still be a barrier for households that are already stretched thin, which is why manufacturer partnerships matter as much as utility ones. Conversations with Google Nest, which previously helped deliver a million discounted smart thermostats to low-income programs nationwide, have pointed to a real solution here too: below-retail pricing for devices going into low-income programs, with a clear path to providing thermostats at no cost at all when demand response enrollment is built into the installation itself. 

The device and the sign-up should not be two separate hurdles. They should be one visit, one form, and with no upfront cost to the household.

That is how enrollment should work in practice. A household receives a free or heavily discounted smart thermostat along with installation support, and is enrolled in the utility’s demand response program at the same time. That last part matters. Enrollment rates drop sharply when installation and sign-up happen as separate steps. Doing both together, at a community event or a home visit arranged through a trusted partner, is what actually gets people enrolled.

Not every home is a perfect fit for a Wi-Fi connected thermostat, either. Households without reliable internet access, or living in buildings that rely on window air conditioning units rather than central heating and cooling, cannot always take advantage of one directly. For those households, alternatives exist too, like behavioral demand response programs that pay customers for shifting their energy use in response to a simple text or email, no smart device required. The goal is the same either way: meet households with whatever actually fits their home.

Trust Is Part of the Technology

Getting the savings right, though, is only half the challenge. The harder part is getting the thermostat into the right homes in the first place. The households who need a program like this most are also the least likely to be reached by a utility mailer or an online sign-up form. Awareness is a barrier. Language is a barrier. Trust is often a barrier. 

That is exactly why building trust matters as much as building the technology. A recommendation from a familiar neighbor or a trusted local organization, a block association, a community-based organization, a housing nonprofit, an elected official’s office, carries real weight in a way that a utility flyer never will. 

That pattern holds up nationally, too. Conversations with both Google Nest and Uplight, two companies that run thermostat and demand response programs across the country, describe the same story: mailing free devices to households with a set of instructions rarely works, since the units often go unused or end up resold, while programs anchored by a trusted local partner see real, lasting enrollment. 

Households already enrolled in assistance programs like LIHEAP tend to respond best of all, since they have already raised their hand once, and a program like this should meet that same effort with a meaningfully larger upfront incentive, not the standard one.

The households who need this most are the least likely to hear about it through traditional outreach. That is exactly why outreach has to look different.

Why Queens, Why Now

High energy burden shows up across New York, including in smaller upstate cities with older housing stock and limited access to utility rebate programs. But not every neighborhood is equally ready for a program like this right now. Queens stands out because of its density of trusted community infrastructure and its housing mix. 

Neighborhoods like Flushing, Jamaica, Woodhaven and Richmond Hill, and Astoria combine high energy burden with a strong share of one to three family owner-occupied homes, the housing type best suited to smart thermostat savings because residents control their own heating and cooling systems, plus existing networks of block associations and community organizations that a program like this can plug into right away.

Everyone’s Job

Energy affordability is not just a financial issue. It is a health issue, a housing issue, and a climate justice issue. But closing this gap is not any one organization’s job. It is everyone’s. The more people who know these programs exist, the faster that knowledge spreads, and the bigger the impact, both for family budgets and for the grid as a whole, since every home that shifts its energy use during peak hours is a home helping keep the lights on for everyone else. 

This is the kind of work the New York League of Conservation Voters Education Fund is proud to advance alongside trusted partners – helping translate strong policy and smart technology into real savings for families. One thermostat. One household. One community at a time.

If you already have a smart thermostat, or you enroll in a program like this, tell your neighbors. To learn more about what is available, NYSERDA’s EmPower+ program is a good place to start, alongside the demand response programs offered directly by Con Edison and National Grid, and other programs like Grid Rewards in Westchester.

Noor Malik is a Building Decarbonization Fellow at the New York League of Conservation Voters. She holds a Master of Regional Planning from Cornell University, with a focus on climate adaptation, coastal resilience, and community open space planning. Her project work includes a community resilience plan for Brownsville, Brooklyn addressing urban heat vulnerability, a Soil Reuse Hub proposal for North Brooklyn Neighbors, and a managed retreat and coastal adaptation study for Coney Island. To learn more about Noor and her work, visit her LinkedIn page here.