Wrote an energy action plan for your school
Use our guidance and template to develop an energy action plan for your school
30 points for this action
Overview
Overview
Your school might have a long term target for complete decarbonisation or might just want to save some money and budget for the next few years. An Energy Plan can be a useful tool for any school. Get it down on paper and put someone in charge of making it happen.
Importantly, do not let perfection get in the way of progress. The plan doesn’t need to be perfect, data doesn’t have to be complete before action is taken. The plan should be a working document to be reviewed and updated as often as necessary.
Define your Energy Plan
Your school might have a long term target for complete decarbonisation or might just want to save some money and budget for the next few years. An Energy Plan can be a useful tool for any school. Get it down on paper and put someone in charge of making it happen.
Importantly, do not let perfection get in the way of progress. The plan doesn’t need to be perfect, data doesn’t have to be complete before action is taken. The plan should be a working document to be reviewed and updated as often as necessary.
Define your Energy Plan
- Start with a review of the big picture.
- Does your school, Trust or Local Authority have long term decarbonisation goals or other strategies that should tie together? It might be something that seems unrelated like wellbeing.
- Does your school have any significant expansions or similar changes planned?
- Get your team together. An Energy Plan should have clear ownership by school leaders but also needs input from members of the leadership team, teaching staff, site team, finance, trustees or governors and pupils. Make sure that each action has a clear owner.
- Define the scope of your targets. Identify any gaps in your energy use and other supporting data and whether they can be filled - for example by upgrading energy meters.
- Ensure your Energy Sparks account is fully up and running; appropriate user accounts have been set up and relevant users are receiving Energy Sparks alerts. Identify any users that might need training.
Identify and prioritise actions
- Identify some of the bigger actions that will be needed in the long term, even if you don’t know when they will be needed or exactly what the solutions are. For example: a fossil fuel heating system will need to be replaced to meet a decarbonisation target. Aim to replace a gas boiler when it is 15-20 years old. You will need to seek advice on options for replacement before the end of the boiler’s life.
- Review your Energy Sparks data and analysis to identify the energy consumption challenges for your school. Energy Sparks alert notifications and analysis should be able to identify some quick, low-cost wins for your school.
- Identify your Priority Actions. Find these by clicking on “Review energy analysis” on the Adult Dashboard and going to the Priority actions tab. This table can be sorted by actions that will save the most money or carbon.
- Review your Energy Sparks alert notifications regularly.
- Use this information to list where energy might be wasted at your school. These are the problems you need to address.
- List the possible actions you could take to address each of these areas of waste. The adult advice pages and pupil dashboard will list adult led actions and pupil based activities that are recommended for your school based on your energy consumption.
- Identify any known issues at your school such as boiler faults or hard to heat areas.
- Identify any barriers to making progress. You might need external help to make changes to heating settings. You might need to apply for funding or seek professional advice.
- Try to focus on the quick wins first and any actions that might help break down any barriers.
- Identify whether you need more information to support your actions, for example carrying out indoor temperature monitoring.
Get the plan down in writing
- Identify the staff or pupils responsible for each energy saving action.
- Identify a completion date or whether the action is ongoing.
- Identify whether there is a cost associated with the action and how the cost will be funded.
- Identify targets for future energy performance.
- Share the problems and proposed actions with the whole school.
- Keep updating the school community with your performance so everyone takes ownership of reducing energy use and helps to reduce climate change.
If you need further help to develop your energy action plan consider booking an Energy Sparks virtual energy audit. We encourage your business manager, site manager, eco-team lead and some student representatives to attend the video call, so the whole school is on board with the action you need to take.