I think it's wonderful that this is included in 2.5. We won't be able to upgrade that far until December 2013, but we'll be upgrading to 2.4 in July. Is there a plugin version from github that will work with 2.4? This would be for experimental purposes, not on our development server.
I don't think so, but if you look at this forum thread https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=226036 then William has been trying to make badges work with an earlier version of Moodle so you might like to ask him how he has been managing it?
You might have a look at
Using a label with conditions as a badge is a clever idea, but it doesn't let the user display the badge anywhere else, or provide any outcome tracking. I think we need a more robust solution. I'll check the other thread for backporting possibilities.