‘We’re on track to become net zero by 2025’
Kingston Maurward College in Dorset has switched to renewable energy to heats its buildings. Principal Luke Rake explains how
K
ingston Maurward is a further education college in Dorset with a focus on land and environmental education,
including agriculture, animal sciences and conservation management. We are fully immersed in nature as an organisation and sponsor a highly popular Studio School for 11 to 16-year- olds on our site, where students follow the National Curriculum while also working towards industry-specific technical qualifications through real world work experience. In 2020, the college committed to
attempting to become carbon net zero by 2025, well in advance of national and local government targets. We strongly felt we needed to be proactive in tackling climate change, and that we couldn’t simply wait for things to happen.
Helpfully, the college does have
land to develop new ideas, but our infrastructure is mostly off-grid, with the only mains facility being electrical supply. The estate comprises 90 buildings – all of which utilised oil or LPG for heating, including historic buildings and listed parkland. This meant further challenges for both planning and retrofit. Following a baseline assessment
of total carbon usage on the estate (c1000T/yr) the college contracted consultants ReEnergise as specialist brokers and support to facilitate not only a Salix PSDS bid, but also the subsequent implementation of our plans. Together, the estate team and ReEnergise developed a carbon reduction strategy and business case analysis for biomass and heat
pump solutions with a range of funding options. ReEnergise then supported the
college’s application to Salix, with a step-by-step risk reduction process (including technical confirmation and project definition, detailed design and tendering for installation contractors). The tendering process reduced costs for the college from £2.4m to £1.6m with a final project delivering an extensive ground source heat pump district heating network, alongside air source heat pump technology for smaller and residential buildings on site. In total, we received just over
£2 million in PSDS funding. This then enabled local action and funding drawdown of some £300,000 from Dorset Council’s Low Carbon Scheme. The synergy between the needs of the authority and the college meant that this single project could realise as much carbon reduction as all other low-carbon projects in Dorset. The all-round political benefits
certainly helped with our funding application success. More importantly for us, it showed how collaborative working, where everyone is after a ‘win’, enables some really outstanding outcomes in a short space of time. Even though we have a highly sensitive estate, we have managed to not only gain a successful planning outcome, but also delivered a highly complex project in a short space of time.
36 AUTUMN 2022 FundEd
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