New Schema to Represent Energy and Transportation Incentives
Motivation
Governments, utilities, and other organizations offer financial incentives to help make efficient appliances and vehicles more affordable for consumers. These incentives save people money, but can be difficult to find and understand. Information is fragmented across multiple sources and is often formatted inconsistently, sometimes in ways that are hard to understand by typical consumers. This can limit awareness and adoption.
Description
We propose a new type, SustainabilityFinancialIncentive, which contains information about financial incentives related to electrification, carbon emissions reduction, or other sustainability initiatives. This schema aims to balance ease of adoption while still providing consumers with the highest priority information they need to understand incentives.
Our goals in this effort are to develop schema guidance that:
- Is easy for incentive providers to adopt
- Applies globally as well as domestically in the United States
- Provides unique incremental value over existing data sets
- Will generate data that can be shared broadly for public use (e.g. via DataCommons.org)
We do not want to:
- Develop competing standards
- Design a schema that fits every possible use case
- Design a schema that only works for specific domains (e.g. only solar incentives)
The core use case we have in mind is providing basic information about available incentives. In particular, we want to answer these questions:
- What general category of purchase (e.g. solar panels or heat pumps) is being incentivized?
- How much money can I access to help defray the cost of purchase and installation? We can approximate that with:
- How much money do people typically receive?
- What's the maximum amount of money possible?
- Is it available in my area?
- Is the incentive still active or has it expired or lost funding?
- Where can I learn more about this incentive?
Here are the proposed fields:
FinancialIncentive
| Field | Data type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| display_name | string | A human-readable display name for this incentive e.g. "Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid and) Electric Vehicles (FAME-II)" |
| eligible_region | DefinedRegion | The region in which the incentive is applicable. |
| value | IncentiveValue | The amount of money the consumer can receive. |
| status | enum | Whether this incentive is currently active. ACTIVE |
| provider | Provider | The entity / organization that is providing this incentive. |
| url | string | A URL where people can find more information about this incentive, including a description of what it is, eligibility criteria, and how it can be redeemed. |
| incentivized_item_category | enum | The general category of the item being incentivized. ELECTRIC_VEHICLE |
| purchase_type | enum (optional) | The type of purchase the consumer must make in order to qualify for this incentive. NEW_PURCHASE |
| goods_or_services | enum (optional) | The types of purchases that are covered by the incentive. For example some incentives are only for the goods (tangible items) but the services (labor) are excluded. GOODS_ONLY |
| redemption_type | enum (optional) | The manner in which the incentive is redeemed. TAX_CREDIT |
| requirements | IncentiveRequirements (optional) | The requirements that must be met in order to redeem this incentive. |
| valid_range | daterange | Which dates this incentive is valid on. |
| marked_up_by | enum | The type of entity that marked up this incentive. INCENTIVE_SOURCE means the organization administering this incentive also marked up the webpage providing this data. AGGREGATOR means a third party group found this incentive and included it in their own markup. INCENTIVE_SOURCE |
IncentiveValue
| Field | Data type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| typical_amount | MonetaryAmount (optional) | A typical amount that people receive, if applicable. |
| absolute_max | MonetaryAmount (optional) | The maximum amount of money that this incentive can be redeemed for. |
| absolute_max_percentage | Number (optional) | The maximum percentage of the cost of the incentivized item that can be redeemed. For example, "You can claim up to 30% of the total cost" would be represented as absolute_max_percentage=30 |
| amount_per_unit | AmountPerUnit (optional) | For incentives that are based on amounts other than price, how much per which unit the claimant can get. |
AmountPerUnit
| Field | Data type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| amount | MonetaryAmount | The money value per unit. In other words the numerator. |
| unit | enum | The unit that is measured to determine the amount given. In other words the denominator. |
IncentiveRequirements
| Field | Data type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| has_income_limit | boolean (optional) | Whether the incentive has an income limit. |
| price_limit | MonetaryAmount (optional) | The maximum price the incentivized item can have and still qualify for this incentive (e.g. German EV incentives have different amounts for under 40.000e vs. over 40.000e) |
Example
{
"@context": "https://schema.org/",
"@type": "SustainabilityFinancialIncentive",
"displayName": "Inflation Reduction Act ITC",
"eligibleRegion": {
"@type": "Country",
"addressCountry": "US"
},
"value": {
"@type": "ValueSpecification",
"typicalAmount": {
"@type": "Money",
"currency": "USD",
"amount": 9000,
},
"absoluteMaxPercentage": 30,
},
"provider": {
"@type": "GovernmentOrganization",
"name": "Internal Revenue Service",
},
"url": "https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/homeowners-guide-federal-tax-credit-solar-photovoltaics",
"incentivizedItemCategory": 'SOLAR\_PANEL',
"purchaseType": 'NEW\_PURCHASE',
"goodsOrServices": 'GOODS\_AND\_SERVICES',
"redemptionType": 'TAX\_CREDIT',
"validRange": {
"startDate": "2022-08-31",
"endDate": "2034-12-31",
},
"status": 'ACTIVE',
}