Persistent gaps and uneven coverage in U.S. energy-efficiency incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for 99.9% of U.S. businesses, yet the alignment of energy-efficiency (EE) incentives with the improvement opportunities most often identified for these firms remains unclear. We evaluate long-term incentive alignment by linking 164,308 assessment recommendations (ARs) from the U.S. Department of Energy's Industrial Training and Assessment Centers (ITAC) database (1981–2024) with 4311 EE incentive programs documented in the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency (DSIRE). We define incentivized ARs (IARs) as recommendations associated with at least one incentive and non-incentivized ARs (NIARs) otherwise. We find that the share of IARs first rose from <3% in 1991 to ∼20% in 2024. Technological breadth varies substantially across states, with 127 unique IARs in California versus 1–2 in Alaska and Rhode Island. Frequency analysis shows high-frequency IARs (≥100 occurrences) are concentrated in energy management, while persistent NIARs are sectoral-specific: variable-speed drives persist as NIARs in services entities, and efficient motors persist as NIARs in transportation and mining entities. The findings indicate that incentive portfolios are expanding but remain incomplete and uneven, suggesting that utilities and agencies should prioritize persistent, sectoral-specific NIARs and broaden offerings in states with low technological diversity beyond a narrow set of energy-management technologies.