Schools Environmental Efficiency Study
This is a pilot project between The School of St Helen & St Katharine and St Birinus (Boys) School.
The project aims to demonstrate the potential environmental, economic and educational benefits of implementing energy saving actions in schools.
It will engage the pilot schools to help them increase energy efficiency. A series of energy saving actions will be determined, implemented, and measured to highlight the ease of savings possible in schools. The project elements will be linked to the school’s curriculum to provide a practical learning opportunity for students.
The project will run for 5 months. A strat date is yet to be agreed.
Project stages:
1. Energy Actions
- Liase with energy efficiency experts and other partners. These include a representative from the Carbon trust and a local energy consultant, a local authority representative, etc.
- Analyse data from the energy bills of each school
- Create a walk-through plan for both schools covering all major energy areas
- Determine a checklist of energy saving actions to be used. Examples include:
- Installing energy saving devices
- Management systems
- Efficiency audits
- Plan a schedule, budget, and guidance for implementing energy saving actions
- Implement appropriate efficiency measures
2 Measure and monitor
- Create a schedule and method of noting changes in energy efficiency
- Document data
3. Support development of opportunities for students
Coordinate opportunities for student participation with environmental education coordinator of both schools. Opportunities for student participation include:
- Collecting meter readings
- Studying room temperatures
- Making an inventory of electrical appliances
- Calculating over night energy use
- Collating the final report
4. Report and evaluate
- Gather data on changes in energy use (from meters and bills)
- Calculate changes in energy efficiency over duration of the project
- Report on outcomes of the project including results of actions taken and student participation
- Suggest areas for improvement and further application of project principles
Need:
Even with national targets for greater efficiency in utility use in place, the school system is lacking the most basic support to achieve this. There are no programmes in place to promote and guide energy efficiency in schools. The basic principles of utility management, when applied to businesses, find average savings of 10% to 20%. In the case of schools this represents a huge potential savings. However, development of a schools efficiency programme requires testing of simple utility saving actions, such as energy, appropriate for a wide range of schools.
Further, with a growing emphasis on environmental education, there is an opportunity to integrate implementing utility efficiency measures within the curriculum.
This project will be a pilot study that will implement energy saving changes in a secondary school whilst developing opportunities to integrate students in implementing, measuring and monitoring progress. The aim of this project is to demonstrate effective improvements in utilities. In the future other utilities such as waste and water could be included in further projects.
Partnerships:
This project will include consultation with Oxfordshire County Council’s Environmental Schools Support Officer and a representative from the Independent Schools Council to ensure maximum relevancy from the project outcomes. The Carbon Trust can provide baseline data on energy consumption in schools and an efficiency expert help determine energy saving actions.
Evaluation:
This project will be evaluated in two ways
1) A measurement of changes in energy use Since most utilities are associated with bills based on a measurement of use (kilowatt hours for electricity and gas), changes are relatively easy to measure and monitor. Improvement in energy use can be directly associated with utility cost saving, and is usually a fairly simple calculation.
2) A measurement of education potential
By offering the students opportunities to participate in implementing and measuring changes. Measurements include numbers of students participating, or amount of class time devoted to this project.
Sustainability:
The project proposed here is an important first step of a larger programme of utility saving. By collecting data on the changes to energy usage in sample secondary schools and by affording students educational opportunities to participate in implementation and monitoring, actual improvements to the utility efficiency and environmental performance of schools can be achieved as well as integrated environmental education. Possible outcomes of the project could include more Local Authority investment in similar work across Oxfordshire and the UK and central government investment in programmes to help schools.
For more information about The Environmental Information Exchange visit www.brookes.ac.uk/eie