It is accepted wisdom that solar panels should be ‘the last thing you do’, once all your lights are LED, your loft lagged and your windows double, even triple, glazed. This viewpoint is even enshrined in legislation with less energy efficient domestic and business properties receiving a lower feed-in-tariff rate.
See also
Helping my old school go solar (external)
This logic suggests that there is a linear journey one should follow, from the cheaper energy wins to the big-ticket items such as solar PV. But what if reversing this journey made it quicker; if installing solar earlier made implementing other energy efficiency measures easier?
Evidence from our Solar Schools project certainly points to this. Solar Schools helps schools raise money to install solar panels. We provide on and offline resources, communications training, support and mentoring which enable schools to reach out to, and involve, both their immediate and wider communities.
We’ve witnessed mini energy revolutions taking place within many of our Solar Schools. Running a high profile project has succeeded in pushing once struggling and almost invisible ‘green teams’ in to the spot light. With higher visibility has come kudos, and the mandate and support to make things happen.
Newnham Croft in Cambridge installed PV after raising £10,000 with Solar Schools. Before this Newnham’s ‘eco team’ struggled to gain traction within the school. Post installation, they have the backing of the entire community and have been able to carry out a whole host of energy efficiency measures, including installing insulation and efficient lighting, initiatives they had been trying to get off the ground for many years. Environmentalism is now woven inextricably into the school’s image of itself, from the pupils to the staff and the management team.
The chair of governors has written a detailed ‘Eco Vision’ that positions the school as “a leader in energy reduction, environmental protection and sustainable living”.
Microgeneration turns the current electricity system paradigm on its head. Instead of being passive recipients of electricity, schools, homes and businesses that generate their own become actively engaged in the dynamics of energy production and consumption. Studies of post-PV energy saving in households have found reductions in consumption of around 6%, but the potential of energy saving by early- adopters could well be limited by extensive efficiency measures taken by these households before installing PV.
Theoretically, the opposite is true of most of the UK’s schools. The school building stock is aged and aging. With budgets ever squeezed, many schools struggle to get far along the energy efficiency journey without a little help.
Microgeneration provides a tangible hook to emotionally engage the entire school community with the issue of energy use. The subsequent behavioural changes enter a feedback loop that quickly ingrains ‘greenness’ into the personality of the school. And schools are perfectly placed to play a role in amplifying these behavioural changes throughout their communities. Mechteld Blake, a parent governor at Pendock Primary, led a team that has just succeeded in raising over £9,000. Pendock Primary has just 42 pupils. On hitting their fundraising target, Mechteld blogged, “I have felt like a film star winning an Oscar with people stopping their cars in the middle of the road to shout “Congratulations”. Admittedly it was only one car but we are a very small community so in proportion to a place like London it would be the equivalent of thousands.”
Although they are reaching the end of their Solar Schools journey, Pendock is already planning further fundraising activity for LED lighting and other efficiency measures. They are set to go on to achieve greater things as a result of their participation in our project, as a result of reordering the accepted efficiency journey.
Our experience is anecdotal but it does point to an interesting phenomenon that could benefit from further research and attention. Policy makers often seem to forget that it takes energy to implement energy reduction measures. Success has given the Solar Schools teams at Pendock Primary and Newnham Croft the impetus they need to make real and lasting change happen within their schools. We need to speed up our national energy saving effort; could the key lie in replicating this ‘Solar Schools effect’?
