Investigate options for making your school fully energy efficient

There are many ways that we can address the issue of energy waste in schools.

You may be aware of some of these already.  They're listed on your school's adult dashboard under Energy saving opportunities.

Some involve people changing their behaviour - like turning lights off and switching appliances off over holidays - to avoid wasting energy.  Other solutions will require a little bit of know-how (like changing the boiler controls) or will need your school to buy particular technology (such as timers or LED lights).  There are even some solutions that will require specialist help and/or lots of funding.

Play our top trumps style game to learn more about the cost and carbon payback of various energy saving improvements.

You may notice that some improvements will save lots of CO2 but not much money, or the other way around. This will depend on whether an improvement saves gas or electricity. Gas and other fossil fuels produce a lot of CO2 when they are burnt, so reducing the amount of fossil fuels used in a school will reduce the amount of CO2 produced. In the UK, electricity produces a small amount of CO2 for each unit used but it is very expensive. So reducing the amount of electricity a school uses will save a lot of money but won't reduce the school's carbon footprint by as much.

Explanation of ratings on the cards
Costs and emissions savings and cost to install are taken where possible from the Energy Sparks data for UK schools. Alternatively, we used the Energy Savings Trust savings and cost figures for UK homes.

Average primary school is two form entry, average secondary is six form entry.
Note that ratings ranges are not equal sizes. 


The numbers in our cards are average values.  You can access the specific values for your school on the Energy Sparks platform.

Some of these you can find on your school's adult dashboard, as in this example:

To discover other opportunities you'll need to explore the Energy Efficiency Advice pages, accessible from the 'Review energy analysis' button on the Adult Dashboard.