Capitalizing on New Water Heater Energy Star Ratings

I had lunch yesterday with a senior program manager for the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE) to discuss their members' (utilities) efforts to encourage newly Energy Star'd high efficiency gas water heaters. Current utility incentives for .62 EF water heaters range from about $30-$50 while incentives run from $100-$300 on .82 EF equipment. CEE is working on an aggressive marketing campaign to promote these programs and the value of high efficiency water heaters which interested distributors could participate.