FEATURE: SUSTAINABILITY 7. Learning from experience. Some tips:


a. Pace. This is a long-term endeavour. Pace is important. Every school can get there but it needs to be done in bite-sized chunks. Take it step by step. (I spend as much time advising schools what not to do as I do advising them what to do).


b. Fortune favours the brave. However, when necessary, strike while the iron is hot. Fleeting financial opportunities do occur and they need to be seized (which can only be done if there is already a plan in place). Example, some schools have already tackled much of the heat decarbonisation requirement and will be financially in the green much more quickly than others courtesy of the recent renewable heat incentive (RHI). But most schools were not aware of the implications of the RHI and didn’t exploit it. The scheme has now closed and there is nothing like it currently available.


c. Find a reliable partner. Seizing opportunities at the right time means being well informed and operating a good commercial and political radar. But unless the bursary staff are superhuman that objective will entail having a reliable partner, to act as the radar, as well as taking on the management of much of the work so that the Bursary can carry on managing the school.


d. The “Pit Stop” issue. Do remember that every school will have to do its Major Decarbonisation Phase. A bit like a pit stop in a F1 race, it has to be done at some stage but you can choose when you do it.


8. Red Herrings. Some net-zero noise and obfuscation, to be avoided:


a. Carbon offsetting. Carbon offsetting at scale is increasingly being recognised for the pretender to the throne that it is. Offsetting should be the last resort once all other measures have been implemented. Investing in it in advance of that is generally a waste of money. Several large corporates have recently rowed back on their claims of early carbon- neutrality, having realised that their offsetting programmes are not in practice achieving the expected carbon reduction. It is also becoming clear that double-counting is rife. (That’s not to say that a school subscribing to a verifiable local initiative is a bad thing e.g. tree planting or rewilding, but the purpose and limitations need to be recognised).


b. No silver bullet. Don’t expect – or hold out for – the silver bullet. For example, Hydrogen for heating buildings keeps being touted in some quarters, but it will not be our saviour, because it will not be commercially viable (even if it can be made safe). This is a play by the oil and gas community to retain assets and protect their markets: it will eventually fail. Green Hydrogen will be vital for other aspects of net-zero, but not for heating buildings.


Illustrations


Some examples of what this looks like in practice, using extracts from an authentic school EDP.


These two charts illustrate the typical school carbon footprint:


The chart below shows an extract from an EDP for a large day school in an urban setting, covering the enabling plan’s major projects (building names have been sanitized):


The net financial impact of these projects will be as shown on the chart below:


In other words, once all these projects have collectively paid back (after a total of 6 years) the school will be making significant financial gains in operating costs. It all seems like a no-brainer, but it does matter that the various measures have been realistically costed and modelled and that the cashflow does not exceed the annual limits set by the school: this is no place for wishful thinking.


The related Main Decarbonisation Phase is shown in the chart extracted below. Note that the school is not rushing into this work: there is no need to do so from a compliance and regulatory perspective, whilst from the school’s commercial and cashflow perspective it makes sense to spread the projects over several years:


May 2024


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