FEATURE FOCUS: SUSTAINABILITY
Readers may recognise a process similar in concept to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) process. It works well for individual projects or a grouping of projects (a programme). It is designed to flush out potential costly mistakes and dead ends, which can then be avoided. The idea is that each step is progressively more substantial, with the major expenditure not until Step 5. A school only commits to the next step in the process once the preceding step has justified continued progression. Conversely, if a major hurdle is encountered that undermines the prospect of successful completion, then the process can be halted. For example, during Step 3 – Project Definition – it may become clear that in order to convert the heating to heat pumps the school estate will need an upgrade in power from the grid and that upgrade will be prohibitively expensive. Or, more likely, the upgrade cannot be done until a specific year in the future and therefore the heat pump project will have to be delayed accordingly.
The EDP serves as Step 2 in this process. It would be expected to follow on from a period of initial broad analysis and discussions between the supporting consultants and relevant school staff, under Step 1. The output from the EDP is the draft programme for the decarbonisation of the school estate across the entirety of the school’s heat, transport and power inventory, plus all the supporting detail to justify the programme. The draft programme contains a range of projects. The EDP should indicate the linkage between them, but each project will merit its own Step 3, 4 and 5. The diagram below illustrates how this might work:
likely to be scheduled early in the overall programme. Power metering seems to be much discussed, for school sites: heat metering, not so much. And yet heat metering is arguably the more important for many school estates. Heat metering in this context is a means to measure how much heat is coming from a given plant room and being used by the distribution circuits served by that plant room. Over time, this metering enables the heat demand to be established precisely, thereby enabling the low-carbon heating plant capacity to be confirmed. This matters! Heating plant sizing merits an article in its own right, because it’s become rather important ever since net-zero came on the radar. In most school plant rooms during the fossil fuel era the heating plant has tended to be over-sized. After all, who wants to be the engineer that installed too small a boiler, leading to a cold school? Engineers can get away with over-sizing for fossil fuel plant because it’s relatively cheap. Not so with the renewable alternatives, which invariably cost significantly more at the scale of capacity required in school buildings: heat pumps and biomass systems need to be sized precisely.
Later Projects
For the avoidance of doubt, this diagram is not intended to indicate that the main heating plant conversion must wait until the later years of the decarbonisation programme. Its timing is almost entirely within the gift of the school and could be earlier. However, as discussed above, it is the most challenging and disruptive of all the net-zero tasks a school will face, and schools may have good reason not to start it immediately.
Won’t new technology change everything?
School governors often ask how reliable the EDP is, given it’s covering work that could last for 20 years or more. Surely new technologies will emerge during that period that will negate some of the plan? It’s an entirely reasonable question, given that net-zero is a relatively new endeavour and, if you keep abreast of the net-zero news, barely a day goes by when somebody doesn’t announce something that is going to be game-changing. The answer is in three parts:
• Think of this in the same vein as an estate master plan: the EDP necessarily covers some decades, because it would be an engineering mistake not to tackle the estate planning holistically and it will usually take decades to get all the projects done. But, like the conventional master plan drawn up by an architect, the EDP will require review and adjustment every 5 years or so. That will be one opportunity to take account of the latest technological developments.
In this example - again, not to scale, because it will vary for each school – the energy efficiency works, solar PV projects, EV charging point installations, and CHP project are all part of the enabling phase. They happen early on in what might well be a 20-year programme, because there is no reason to delay them. Each of them either serves to reduce operating costs or is sensible early preparation for later projects. The top 3 sections probably need no great justification: they seem usually to be accepted these days as ‘no- brainers’: although, there are ways to get these projects right and ways to waste money on them, so each one still requires the due diligence associated with the step-by-step risk reduction process. CHP may merit a bit more explanation, as will heat metering.
CHP (Combined Heat & Power)
I once heard this technology described by an installer as ‘the box that saves money’. ‘2 for the price of 1’ might be another epithet, although in fact ‘1.5 for the price of 1’ would be more accurate in terms of energy generated and that just doesn’t roll off the tongue in quite the same way. A CHP unit burns the incumbent heating fuel – for example, mains gas – to generate power. Assuming reasonable efficiency in the combustion process and given the current disparity between grid gas and grid electricity prices, this results in relatively cheap power. But in addition, the heat from the combustion process is captured and diverted into the site’s central heating system. This concept works well for financial gain in situations where there is a constant heat demand. It does not work as well where the heat demand is seasonal, because the heat captured will not be required. On a school estate the most common application is for a swimming pool with year-round usage.
Heat Metering
This is shown in the Later Projects section of the plan because it relates to the conversion of the school’s heating plant. However, it is an enabling task and
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• Whilst it is true that technological innovations are now coming thick and fast, the national intent is to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050 and there is nothing on the technological radar that is going to cause a major change in school estate decarbonisation design concepts in that timeframe (bearing in mind that the plan is shaped by the heating plant technologies – everything else is secondary to that). Rather, innovations will lead to changes in detail. Again, these can be incorporated into the EDP at the regular review points; or the EDP could be adjusted when a significant innovation becomes commercially viable.
• One of the reasons why the step-by-step approach is essential for EDP implementation is to allow such changes to be accounted for.
ReEnergise, the Company
ReEnergise is neither a conventional MEP consultancy, nor installer, nor energy broker: it is an enabling organisation with the primary intent of getting as many schools and colleges as possible to work towards becoming net-zero carbon as soon as resources, common sense, due diligence, pragmatism, and their primary function as educational establishments permit them to do so.
The most apt description of this service is that they are architects of school estate decarbonisation. They guide schools through a step-by-step risk-reduction process that avoids them wasting time and money on dead- ends or expensive mistakes, following a process of consultancy and project management that is similar to the role of a conventional architect in school estate master-planning.
For further information or to discuss your school’s plan please contact Nigel as follows: 07496 950531
nigel@reenergisegroup.com
http://www.reenergisegroup.com
December 2023
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