What is the Babylon Project?
The Babylon Project (TBP) is an outgrowth of the Babylon experience. That experience is based upon the residential energy efficiency program operated by the Town of Babylon. This program, launched in October of 2008, has drawn considerable attention from municipalities and other interested parties around the nation. That interest informs why we created TBP and set up a go-to site for building efficiency operations.
We start from the premise that energy efficiency is the single, most cost-effective path to job creation, environmental protection and national security. We know that 40% of energy generated is consumed by existing buildings all of which could be made at least 25% more efficient by conventional means. By making this investment we will be creating millions of new clean energy jobs. These are good paying jobs that can support families and create new opportunities for those whose prospects have been limited in the past.
TBP was conceived to facilitate the development of municipally implemented efficiency programs in towns and cities across America. We believe the best way to achieve scale with retrofit programs is to empower municipal leaders to implement programs that will bolster and improve their communities.
The mission of TBP, however, is broader. We believe that the communities who embrace policies which promote environmental protection and sustainability will realize the most success in the future. TBP will help demonstrate how these policies can be used to change lives and transform communities.
The hamlet of Wyandanch in the Town of Babylon, is the most economically distressed community on Long Island. A major revitalization effort, called Wyandanch Rising is underway. This community, which has suffered from decades of environmental degradation, will be rebuilt and transformed into the greenest community on Long Island. TBP will demonstrate how sustainable policies, like Babylon’s retrofit program, can work to elevate distressed communities like Wyandanch.
The Babylon Model
Every facet of the Babylon retrofit program will not be replicable in each jurisdiction but the basic elements of the program are universal. Although municipalities have their own distinct characteristics, there are, nonetheless, fundamentals of the Babylon model that municipalities can, individually and collectively, draw upon. The Babylon Project provides a starting point based upon our operational program, Long Island Green Homes (LIGH). TBP is conceived to process best practices interactively in order to most effectively serve the community of efficiency practitioners. Moreover, TBP will advocate enabling legislation and funding to optimize programmatic objectives. Moving forward, we will address the mechanics of scaling pilot programs.
Bear in mind that, in going from theory to practice, there is often scant correlation between the two. Identifying sub-par as well as best practices provides equal utility to the practitioner. There is no substitute for building brick-by-brick in figuring out how and where things fit.
What follows is a step-by-step look at the process Babylon went through to create its residential energy efficiency program with supporting materials. To access all materials, please join the Babylon Project.
ESCO Example
Existing Equation
Enabling Legislation
Funding Sources
Billing Mechanism 1: Tariffed Installation Program
Billing Mechanism 2: Benefit Assessment
Program Development
Work Development
Workforce Development
Legal Considerations
Grant Applications
Driving Demand
ESCO Example
Babylon was prompted to develop a residential energy efficiency retrofit program in 2007. The town was evaluating proposals from energy services companies (ESCO) to retrofit its existing facilities. The savings from enhanced energy efficiencies would cover the capital costs. The ESCOs guaranteed it. Babylon asked them to think about scaling down this offer to the residential sector. But why would an ESCO go through the headaches of 440 marginal jobs involving as many homeowners when they can deal, instead, with a facility manager overseeing one $3 million job with a built-in 30% management fee?
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Existing Equation 
Babylon began by looking at former and current efficiency programs run, for the most part, by utilities or third-party enterprises supported by public benefit charges. With a few exceptions, these programs, offering incentives to install a menu of measures, had not attained scale. The nature of the work, we understood, was a tough sell. Why spend thousands of dollars on home improvements you can’t see, when, as Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu has famously said, “you can install a marble countertop” instead? How, in fact, do you evaluate the quality of unseen work in walls and attics? Why would financially strapped homeowners tap a line of credit to pay for work they might not realize payback before moving? Add the drudge factor and the result is a limited market niche for residential energy efficiency.
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Enabling Legislation 
To access its solid waste reserve fund for the purpose of remediating energy waste, Babylon amended “Chapter 133, Article I, Solid Waste Management” of Town code to include “the carbon component (or "content of") in energy waste.” Secure as Babylon felt in its authority to implement the program, the town, nonetheless, sought to solidify its position by prompting enabling legislation at the state level. California has led the way in this regard with AB811 that authorizes energy improvement districts. Others have followed suit, including Montgomery County, MD, who consulted Babylon in the run-up to passing their legislation.
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Funding Sources
Show us the money – that is challenge number one. In Babylon’s case, the state obliges the Town to maintain a solid waste reserve fund in order to periodically cap inert ash resulting from an energy-from-waste facility {arc21} co-operated by the Town. This flush reserve fund, collecting nominal money market rates, presented promising potential for funding a $2 million pilot program. But how might the Town go about accessing this fund for such a purpose? The resolution was at once simple and elegant. As CO2 is 28% carbon, the town expanded the definition of solid waste to include energy waste by dint of its carbon component. This departure did have a source: in 2006, the City of Boulder financed its sustainability program from an added solid waste tax then moved on to a carbon tax based on the utility usage. The critical distinction is that Long Island Green Homes was predicated on a revolving fund into which all financing would return at 3% interest. We neither levied an added tax nor offered a government giveaway on the order of the federal Weatherization Assistance Program. Babylon created a sustainable program that pays for itself with little or no costs to homeowners or taxpayers.
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Billing Mechanism 1: Tariffed Installation Program
Some pilot programs had experimented with a billing mechanism called PAYS®, for Pay As You Save, which struck us as comparable to a key component of the ESCO model. At the time we were evaluating this option, a NYSERDA-sponsored (New York State Energy Research Development Authority) white paper touted a variant of this type of on-bill financing, also called a tariffed installation program. We approached our Long Island Power Authority who had been a party to this white paper but, after brief consideration, declined to assist with this remedy. The administrative demands of additional billing and the PR blowback from disconnecting service for delinquent payment doubtless contributed to this decision. LIPA is not unique among utilities in their response.
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Billing Mechanism 2: Benefit Assessment
Necessity was truly the mother of invention in developing LIGH. Obliged to resort to home-grown remedies, these remedies have proven optimal. Babylon’s billing solution, as it turned out, evolved from the source for financing the program. The collection of solid waste is billed as a benefit assessment. When the Town is obliged to clean up a delinquent property, the owner is billed for the work through a benefit assessment. A benefit assessment can be established when a municipality provides a specific improvement on a parcel of property for a public purpose, assessing the cost of the benefit against the property. Should the property owner fail to fulfill their obligation, it is assigned to the property tax. The property tax is first on the lien list, ahead of the mortgage and substantially senior to utility bills.
Benefit assessments were authorized at the federal level by the Revenue Bond Act of 1933. It "provides the authority for a lien to be placed on real property for the delinquent payment of services charged by a public corporation (including a village or city) for a public improvement, i.e. sewage disposal, water supply, utility cables, etc. A city or village shall have a lien on property... for the cost of making safe an unsafe building or structure. It can also provide a lien on real property for the expense of eradicating noxious weeds."
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Program Development
Babylon Town Supervisor Steve Bellone, figured if he was going to ask homeowners to make their houses more efficient, he should start with his own. He and his wife, expecting their first child, were in the process of renovating. The idea of spending thousands plugging cracks and crevices rather than repaving the driveway was a hard sell, but the Supervisor prevailed. Of the building performance specialists he interviewed, one shone as the kind of contractor he would feel comfortable sending into the homes of his constituents. Remember, unlike private contractors, the head of Long Island Green Homes can be fired by his customers come election time. Trusted vendor status is key to overcoming the handful of reservations homeowners have harbored about having work done that they can’t see.
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Work Development
In discussions about green collar jobs and workforce development, work development is often taken for granted. Some have expressed surprise that, given a program structured like the Green Homes program that eliminates all the traditional barriers, homeowners wouldn’t be rushing to sign up. Fact of the matter is that even the Weatherization Assistance Program, with the Feds picking up the full tab, often has to extend to fill out its quota. Long Island Green Homes kicked off with a CFL packaged with energy savings tips, a coupon and an announcement of the new program that was distributed to all the homes in town.
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Workforce Development
The residential energy efficiency sector composed mostly of four-figure jobs has been the provenance of small father & son contractors. This work has been ignored by the unions for the most part. While plumbers (in NY) have established a residential rate, none has been set by either carpenters or laborers (until recently). Apprenticeship programs have not been designed to lure into residential work. Thus ‘workforce development’ has fallen almost exclusively upon the contractors who sort the wheat from the chaff in the course of on-the-job training. They generally believe there is no adequate substitute for this approach. Even larger building performance contractors in California in the backyard of Green for All, the preeminent workforce not-for-profit, have told us that they still expect that 75% of the training will necessarily be on-the-job.
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Legal Considerations
Beyond expanding the definition of solid waste to include energy waste by dint of its carbon component, Babylon passed no other resolution relating to the Green Homes program. Given the public purpose of the program, the multiple benefits, and financing provided via a revolving fund that recoups money disbursed plus interest, no affirming resolution was deemed necessary. Introduction of a comparable program in a neighboring town, did, however, draw exceptions from that town attorney’s office.
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Grant Applications 
In the wake of the ARRA stimulus funds, Babylon has received innumerable solicitations apprising us of “the unique opportunity to receive funding.” Certainly there are consulting fees associated with the guidance these solicitations propose. We are not certain that this guidance will be superior to Babylon’s navigation system. Municipalities may retain consultants to prepare their grant applications, as up to 20% of the EECBG formula grants can be allocated for consulting. We just feel that money can be better spent on programmatic development.
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Driving Demand 
The Green Homes program serves it all up to the homeowner, eliminating the traditional barriers. Those who have come to know the Green Homes program call it a ‘no-brainer’, but how to infiltrate those brains that have yet to get it? Babylon’s announcement of the program was packaged with a free compact fluorescent that was delivered to most homes in the Town. Four months later, Green Homes graced the cover of the town recycling calendar mailed to every household. The program has attracted a lot of media attention. There have been hundreds of queries. How do we drive that into the thousands?
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