Eco-Schools Energy believes that being a sustainable school is about more than teaching pupils about the environment, it is about schools themselves looking at what they can do to change the ways they operate.
Eco-Schools Energy is a joint venture between Eco-Schools England and Winch Energy bringing cutting edge renewable and energy saving technologies to make the business of running schools more sustainable in the future.
Its programmes are designed to help schools reduce their impact on the environment, improve their financial positions, create better learning environments and introduce topics for learning underpinning the ideas and concepts of sustainability with practical actions that will make the school more sustainable in what it does and what it teaches.
Eco-Schools Energy will assess renewable and energy saving technologies as they emerge and bring them to schools to help embed the principles of sustainability into school business management. Innovative programmes will be designed, developed and project managed by Winch Energy, which will bring together schools, installers, financiers and engineers from across Europe. The first programme offered to schools through this joint venture was the Eco-Schools Solar Programme.
The Eco-Schools Solar Programme
The Eco-Schools Solar Programme was launched last year to offer schools free power from solar PV that would be installed at on cost on eligible school roofs. This programme was produced and managed by Winch Energy. In total so far over 1.6 MW of solar PV accounting for nearly 7,000 panels has been installed in 79 schools nationwide in 39 regions; LAs or Diocese. The Eco-Schools Solar Programme will save over 780 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year and over the 25 years of the programme collectively the schools will save over 19,550 tonnes of CO2.
The programme was the subject of much debate in many LAs and Diocese and the original offering had to be changed in the light of government’s u-turn on feed-in-tariffs. In politically challenging times, the programme saw the most schools nationwide being fitted by any school solar PV programme that year.
Current Eco-Schools Energy programmes being offered to schools