Bedford Receives $2.5 million in Energy Grants: What’s in it For You?

By now, most residents have heard about the growing stack of awards and accolades presented to Bedford—named one of Westchester's greenest towns—for its commitment to reducing the town's greenhouse gases and making it a more sustainable place to live. 

The latest recognition is the announcement that the town, along with its partner, the Northern Westchester Energy Action Consortium, was awarded in June $1.26 million from U.S. Department of Energy, to launch a pilot program to create finance and marketing tools to promote residential energy efficiency through energy audits, building retrofits and PACE benefit financing.

The award follows an initial DOE grant of an estimated $1.26 million, presented in April, to roll out the energy retrofit program.

"We're very excited," said Mary Beth Kass of the grant awards, totaling some $2.5 million. Kass is co-president of the Bedford 2020 Coalition, the nonprofit entity who will market the program. "With these funds, we can more quickly scale the residential energy retrofit program in Bedford, and 14 neighboring towns in the consortium."

What this means for residents of Bedford is that you'll soon have the information you need to make informed decisions about making home energy improvements, from financing options to choices of local contractors to do the work.

There's an alphabet-soup-like mix of acronyms associated with Bedford's sustainability efforts. Here's what you need to know:

BEAP/The Bedford Energy Advisory Panel started it all. Formed in 2007, the 9-member panel, led by Kass, developed a Climate Action Plan (CAP) with ambitious goals to lower the town's carbon footprint. The plan was an output of the Bedford Environmental Summit, organized by Kass and Ellen Rouse Conrad, among others, including Bedford's Director of Energy Resources, Mark Thielking. Integrated into the town's master plan in Februrary, the plan led to the formation of…

Bedford 2020 Coalition is a non-profit formed to implement the climate action plan. "We're the grassroots army that will carry out the CAP," said Kass, who co-leads the coalition with Conrad. The task forces include energy, waste and recycling, transportation, land use and water and food and agriculture. In addition, there are three "user group" categories: businesses, schools and civic and religious groups. The last is marketing, a critical component to getting residents to participate in the energy retrofit program, which had low participation when offered by…

NYSERDA/The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority teamed up with Bedford to apply for the grants to scale up the demand for building retrofits. Though Home Performance with Energy Star energy audits have been offered through NYSERDA for the last decade, less than one percent of property owners participate, said Kass. The grant provides resources for marketing expertise, communications strategies, and web tools to bring more residents on board in Bedford and neighboring towns that belong to…

NWEAC/The Northern Westchester Energy Action Consortium. Established in April, this group of 14 municipalities came together to investigate funding opportunities. The consortium leveraged "strength in numbers" to obtain the grant funds to create a model for building retrofits in its member towns and communities state-wide. The grants obtained through the consortium will leverage innovative financing, called…

PACE/Property Assessed Clean Energy financing: PACE will be housed in a new local development corporation that will issue a bond from which homeowners can borrow the money for retrofits and pay it back through their property taxes, according to Thielking. Read our previous story here.

"We can reduce community energy use 15 percent if every homeowner signed up for a retrofit," said Lee Roberts, Bedford's town supervisor. "Imagine the impact on our nation if Bedford's pilot was initiated in every town across the country."