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schools in focus CASE STUDY
Okehampton College is a leader in its community and the education sector at large when it comes to saving the earth. Julia DennisOn speaks to environmental manager Keith Webber about what he’s doing to significantly cut energy at the school and why he thinks you’re spending too much
seeing the light
are. but Webber is on a crusade. he knows large schools can spend over £1,000 a day on energy costs – with some hitting daily bills of up to three times that – and he wants to stop it. upwards of £3,000 a day may seem inconceivable, he says, but it does happen and it needn’t. his goal is to help schools get to absolute zero. “My school used to hit close to £1,000 on some days, whereas now it varies from £400 on a bad day down to zero on a good day,” he comments. this has resulted in an annual savings at the school of £50,000. but it’s not just about money, he says: “We should also be aware of our environmental responsibilities associated with the careless use of energy.” it all started a few years ago when Webber, then a physics teacher, approached his head, asking him whether he realised the school was spending as much as it was on energy and venturing that he could save as much as a staff member’s salary on energy. he took this gamble
Y april 2013 \
www.edexec.co.uk
ou are spending too much on your energy bill. at least, that’s what Keith Webber, the environmental manager at Okehampton College, is likely to conclude if he came round your school. this is not to say many schools – yours included, most likely – aren’t making significant inroads when it comes to protecting the earth. they
with his own pay cheque. “i suggested to him that he take me off timetable for a year and i would save more than my salary and if it didn’t work, i’d take a year off and he’d get his money back,” Webber explains. surprisingly, he wasn’t nervous putting his job on the line like this: “it was just so obvious the savings were there to be had.” Of course he was right and soon set to work on saving the school’s energy.
STEP BY STEP he started by going into every room of the school the earliest in the morning he could and then the latest at night, monitoring what was being left on. “that was really enlightening,” he says. “You could see computers on, all sorts of things.” he then put in a sophisticated monitoring system that means he no longer needs to be peering in windows at all hours. shutting off lights is one thing, but to reach savings of £50,000 took a multipronged approach. Webber put this down to the following support factors: behaviour change campaigns at the school (e.g. ‘switch Off Fortnight’) and after school monitoring clubs
a purchasing policy that says the school always considers buying the most energy efficient equipment
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