SAVANNAH, Georgia — President Barack Obama on Tuesday unveiled plans to give hefty reimbursements to U.S. homeowners who make home improvements to conserve energy.

The president urged Congress to approve the plans to give a shot in the arm to the lagging U.S. construction industry, one of the sectors hardest hit by the economic slump.

“If a homeowner decides to do work on his or her house — to put in new windows, to replace a heating unit, to insulate an attic, to redo a roof — the homeowner would be eligible for a rebate from the store or the contractor for 50 percent of the cost of each upgrade up to $1,500,” the president explained in remarks delivered at Savannah Technical College in Georgia. “If you decided to retrofit your whole house to greatly reduce your energy use, you’d be eligible for a rebate of up to $3,000.”

Obama said Americans would see big savings in their energy bills, as well as at the cash register. “These are big incentives,” he said. “You’d get these rebates instantly from the hardware store or the contractor … right there when you paid.”

Obama said the lower renovation costs could lead to new hiring in the construction trades. “You’ve got a lot of skilled contractors ready to go. And that, in turn, means that the contractors start hiring some of these folks who may have been laid off,” he said, adding that the program also would stimulate U.S. manufacturing since “a lot of these materials are made right here in America.”

“These are companies ready to take on new customers — they’re workers eager to do new installations and renovations, factories ready to produce new building supplies,” the president said. “All we’ve got to do is create the incentives to make it happen.”

The rebate program in its broad outlines is modeled after last year’s popular “Cash for Clunkers” trade-in program, which sparked nearly 700,000 auto sales. That plan offered owners of aging cars and trucks incentives of up to $4,500 toward a new, more-efficient vehicle, a scheme meant to help boost the struggling auto industry while helping the environment. The U.S. Transportation Department reported that by the end of the program late last year, car dealerships had submitted nearly $3 billion in rebate applications. Critics said, however, that the program added to government debt and merely sped up auto sales that would have occurred anyway.