Cover story
Let’s Go Zero
recently launched a £10 million
initiative to fund
30 regional school climate advisors
Community funded solar installation
Following an energy audit, Furze Platt Senior School identified that generating green electricity through solar panels would have a big impact on reducing its carbon emissions. The school – in Maidenhead, Berkshire – decided to work with a local not-for-profit community benefit society (CBS), MaidEnergy, which generated a no-obligation proposal to ‘hire’ the school roofs and install a 224kW solar array. This was based on 12 months of electricity bills combined with detailed online aerial surveys. No capital outlay was required
from the school and the proposal set out the rate the school would be charged for the solar electricity (in pence per kilowatt hour). This was substantially lower than the rate from the National Grid and MaidEnergy estimated the school would save hundreds of thousands of pounds over the length of the 15-year contract. The solar array was installed in summer 2023 and a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) was set up.
Approximately 30% of Furze
Platt’s electricity consumption is now provided by solar panels, saving around 20% on its total electricity bill (with the school continuing to purchase the rest of its electricity from the grid). The school has significantly reduced its carbon emissions and now benefits from a long-term, renewable energy supply at a low cost. Long term PPA arrangements provide schools such as Furze Platt with more resilience against future energy market hikes. During the PPA term, all monitoring, maintenance, insurance and repair costs relating to the solar array are covered by the CBS. To fund the installation,
MaidEnergy launched a community share offer. Investors included members of the school community, with the minimum investment being just £100. All investors benefit from a good return, while also fighting climate change. Lynne Moore, decarbonisation lead for schools, Our Community Enterprise
provided some help with retro- fitting of school buildings in England, with the average secondary receiving £42,000 and the average primary £16,000. But the Let’s Go Zero campaign – which is supporting schools to become zero carbon by 2030 – says this funding is ‘a sticking plaster when a long- term solution is desperately needed’. Let’s Go Zero’s Alex Green has called for ‘a government commitment to retrofitting every school in the UK’. Let’s Go Zero is linking schools
with opportunities for funding and support in seven key areas: energy, food, procurement, waste, water use, travel and school grounds. It recently launched a £10 million initiative to fund 30 regional school climate advisors to help schools fast track changes, and hopes to unlock finance at scale from the public and private sectors. The good news is that even
straightforward measures, such as tracking and managing your energy usage, can make a big difference and should form a central strand of your energy strategy. ‘The first step is to identify when, where and how you consume energy so that you can see where resources and money are being wasted,’ says energy consultant Tim Warneford. ‘Approximately 60% of school energy consumption happens outside of teaching hours, whether in the evenings, weekends or holidays. So installing smart meters and attaching loggers to your
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