Energy saving actions | Energy Sparks

Audience

This page provides help for all registered school users.

You will need to sign-in to follow the instructions on this page.

What are energy saving actions?

The Energy Sparks website features a wide range of suggested energy saving actions for the adults at your school. These provide inspiration, ideas and simple guidance to help schools reduce their energy consumption and promote sustainability.

Our energy saving actions are freely available to anyone, although schools with an Energy Sparks account can choose which actions to take based on their energy consumption and keep track of which actions have been completed on their dashboard.

Actions are organised under the following categories:

Behaviour change - actions like creating and maintaining a holiday switch-off list help raise awareness and engage the school community in reducing energy waste throughout the school.

Building fabric change - actions like upgrading security lights to energy-efficient LEDs help reduce energy consumption through targeted building improvements.

Heating system configuration change - significant energy savings can be achieved by adjusting heating controls, such as changing central heating operating times to better match building use.

Operational change - includes practical actions that support behaviour change, such as providing portable heaters for staff working during holidays to reduce the need for whole-building heating.

Policies - introducing measures like a classroom temperature policy helps create structure, accountability, and clear guidance to support energy-saving behaviours.

Training - Energy Sparks offers regular online training to help schools make the most of their accounts, while additional training can further support staff in building energy-saving knowledge and skills.

Upgrades to appliances - can result in substantial energy savings, especially when replacing equipment that operates for extended periods, such as fridges, freezers and servers.

Each individual action page contains guidance on what to do. Schools that are signed up with Energy Sparks can record their energy saving actions to receive points for our annual scoreboard (find out how to do this below).

Although our energy saving actions are designed to be led by adults, many of our schools choose to involve pupils where possible.

Alongside our energy saving actions, we also have pupil activities as well as short programmes of related activities that school communities can work through together to achieve greater impact. Schools completing whole programmes receive bonus points toward our scoreboard.

How to find relevant actions

There are a number of ways to identify the best energy saving actions for your school; you could:

Follow our recommendations.
Base your choices on our energy saving advice.
Use suggestions from a recent energy audit.
Complete the next steps in a programme.
Use one of our themes.
Use our search functionality.

Each of these is discussed in the following sections.

We suggest focusing on our recommendations, as these will guide you towards the most impactful activities that will help to reduce your energy use. But we also strongly recommend that you review your Energy Sparks analysis and consider your energy consumption trends when deciding which actions to prioritise.

The other options listed above provide more choice if you're looking to focus on a specific topic.

Following our recommendations

Energy Sparks automatically recommends relevant energy saving actions based on your energy analysis, your enrolled programmes, other actions that you have recently completed, as well as any specific suggestions from a recent energy audit.

We automatically rank these suggestions based on which will have the most impact on your energy use.

This page has your current action recommendations. You can also access them:

From your school's adult dashboard - click on Choose activity under your scoreboard update.
When signed in, from the My School menu - choose Recommended activities.
After recording an action, we offer suggestions for what to do next.

Based on your energy saving advice

Energy Sparks has advice pages covering different energy saving topics, such as heating control and electricity baseload. All of the advice pages include a recommended set of energy-saving actions at the bottom of each page.

The actions are all relevant to that topic area and are automatically prioritised based on which will have the most impact on your energy use.

To explore activities by energy saving topic, you can:

Browse through the advice pages for your school and look at the suggestions.
Review your prioritised energy saving opportunities and see the recommended activities for each opportunity.

Based on suggestions from a recent audit

If you have recently benefited from one of our energy audits then we will have provided you with a set of suggested energy-saving actions that will help you reduce your energy use.

This list of recommendations will also be available to view from your school dashboard.

Based on your enrolled programmes

You could also consider working with pupils to complete a programme of activities. Each programme relates to a specific topic such as Watch Out for Heating Waste!

You can view our full list of programmes here.
If your school is already enrolled in a programme, you will see a prompt to complete the next step on your school dashboard.
When signed in, you can review your progress and next steps from individual programme pages.

Based on one of our themes

You can browse through all of our actions, which are organised into different categories: behaviour change, building fabric change, heating system configuration change, operational change, policies, training, and upgrades to appliances.

These are summarised in the above section.

Using our search functionality

If you have a more specific idea about what you would like to focus on, you can also use our search function. Type in keywords to search across all of our energy-saving actions.

How to record actions

After selecting an action, you’ll be taken to a page where you can find all the guidance and resources you might need to complete it.

Follow the link on the page to Record this action (you will need to be signed in).

Note: if you are an admin for more than one school, you will need to select the relevant school from the drop-down list first.

You will then be asked to provide additional details about when you completed the action and a description of how you carried out the activity. Adding photos or documents helps build a more complete picture of what you have done, and will also score you extra points.

We often use this information to showcase the amazing work you are doing, in order to inspire other schools. The information you provide will also be useful evidence during Energy Sparks competitions.

Why should you record your actions?

There are a number of benefits to recording your energy saving actions on Energy Sparks.

These include meeting our engagement expectations (if you have a funded place), building a record to help you with reporting or funding applications, and allowing you to take part in our competitions.

Read more about the benefits.