FEATURE: SUSTAINABILITY
How to go green without going into the red en route
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IGEL AYLWIN-FOSTER of ReEnergise Projects Ltd offers a synopsis of the key points relating to getting a school estate to net-zero, from the perspective of a recognised leading net-zero consultancy in the independent sector.
1. Mission possible. Take heart in the knowledge that all schools in the UK can achieve net-zero carbon, in principle. The challenge is to do so affordably and efficiently, whilst continuing to provide first class education.
2. Timeframe: a long haul. Engineering, commercial, and practical constraints – combined with what’s happening to the national power grid – mean that it will be the work of about 2 decades for most schools.
3. The vital role of holistic estate planning. However, early planning at the whole-estate level will greatly increase the chances of achieving net- zero affordably and efficiently, because it will help to ensure time and/or money will not be wasted on pursuing dead ends or expensive mistakes; and ensure that opportunities will not be missed. The current term for this plan is an estate decarbonisation plan (EDP). The EDP is not an alternative to the conventional estate masterplan drawn up by an architect: it is additional.
4. The importance of heat decarbonisation. A quick look at the typical carbon footprint across scopes 1 to 3 for any school will indicate that heat decarbonisation is the core challenge: it will nearly always be the largest component in the school carbon footprint, often by a large margin. Until the fossil fuel heating plant has been phased out the estate will never be net-zero carbon. Plus, it is the only component that can only be resolved by direct action and funding by the school: everything else is, to some extent, someone else’s problem to solve. So, the EDP needs to be built around tackling heat decarbonisation.
5. How to plan. Having a plan does not mean that it all needs to be implemented in a hurry: often that simply won’t be achievable. There is a way to plan that balances aspiration with affordability and pragmatism:
a. First, establish the baseline: collate all the detail about how the school estate is operating at the moment.
b. Having established the current situation, determine what the overall technical solution will be for the eventual net-zero carbon school estate. How will it work best as a net-zero estate?
c. With that as the ultimate goal, set a cashflow limit per annum for the journey there: net-zero cannot be achieved without significant outlay at some stage, so what should the annual limit on additional expenditure be, compared to the counterfactual of leaving everything until the last minute and then simply doing whatever is cheapest? This is what we mean by ‘going green without going into the red’. It won’t be done without significant capital outlay but with careful planning it can be done with manageable capital outlay – it can be affordable.
d. We also know, from developing scores of EDPs across school estates of all shapes and sizes, that over the longer-term there will be a net
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cumulative financial benefit for most school estates: in other words, it really will save money in an absolute sense – but generally not until all the conversion work has been done.
e. Using that cashflow constraint as the guide, work out the priorities and programming for projects that reduce energy usage/operating costs as much as practicable in the short term, in order to build up a reserve to help pay for the major outlay required in later years. In ReEnergise we currently describe this as the Enabling Phase: it majors on energy efficiency and on- site power generation and storage. (Perhaps ‘Energy Efficiency Phase’ would be a more accurate description).
f. Having reduced energy demand to a practicable minimum, and installed on-site generation and storage to a practicable maximum, the site will now be cheaper to run. (An estimate on one site has this at 70% less use of grid power, but this is largely through on-site generation and storage, not through energy efficiencies. Expect to be disappointed in the reductions achieved purely through efficiencies). This work paves the way for the Main Decarbonisation Phase, in which the fossil fuel heating plant is phased out.
g. The precise timing of the Main Decarbonisation Phase will depend on when current heating plant reaches end-of-life and on UK government policy: there is no point in throwing out perfectly serviceable fossil fuel plant but at some stage it has got to go. At the moment the regulatory deadline for no longer installing like-for-like fossil fuel plant in a retrofit situation is 2035 but there may be reasons on some estates to start earlier, e.g. to coincide with a major development in the overall estate masterplan. The acid test in this phase is carbon reduction.
6. Enabling Phase projects. The main ingredients of the Enabling Phase are well established.
a. Always: LEDs, efficient mechanical components in systems, metering and monitoring of power and heat, improved controls and management of systems, improved systems integration so that all systems work together to provide the school with the cheapest available energy at any moment across all sources
b. Usually: improved insulation, on-site solar PV.
c. Sometimes: on-site windpower; battery storage (but it depends on establishing the right balance between this and power generation).
d. There are some surprises, however. For example, retrofitting double glazing will usually not pay back in the life of the windows installed – it’s not economic. The trick is to get these and other measures done in the right order and quantity. There is no shortcut to planning for this: it needs a business case analysis done across the entire estate. The acid test is financial savings, not carbon, although some carbon emissions will be reduced as a by-product.
e. It’s also worth noting that operating costs may be reduced by reviewing the usage of buildings. Is maximum use being made of the most energy efficient buildings at the school’s disposal, whilst inefficient, uneconomic stock is gradually being used less or even replaced? But of course, there is a limit to this: it’s often the original, old, iconic building that is the heart of the estate and important to the school brand. Plus, even if a building is being used less, it may still require heating to the same extent as it did when in constant use.
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