Insulate Schools from Fuel and Cost Crises

The idea is a big campaign focused on ALL schools:
 to insulate (and improve ventilation)
 convert to green heat, and
 Power and heat with own renewables where feasible.

This has two important areas of benefit,
 helping schools focus on education (by saving money on heating)
 helping develop and scale the retrofit supply chain, creating long term skilled jobs, and kickstarting the necessary decarbonisation of homes and buildings at scale.

Why the contribution is important

Schools are suffering an acute crisis through both energy cost increases and inflationary (wage) pressures. This all comes off their total education budget, which isn’t getting any bigger.

Implementing this idea will save education budgets for education, save the climate, keep these savings on the education budget for the future, and in the process of doing so: develop much-needed learning on effective and efficient reduction of emissions down to zero.

This idea and project is typical of what is required everywhere in this climate crisis: tackling multiple issues at once, growing skills and capacity, and solving problems in an integrated manner.

In this case, it will help redress the bizarre, lamentable and unnecessary trade-off schools are being forced to make between heat and education.

by ErikDalhuijsen on September 01, 2022 at 03:19PM

Current Rating

Average rating: 5.0
Based on: 7 votes

Comments

  • Posted by AngelaMLAnderson September 01, 2022 at 15:26

    This is a no brainer. We cant get to net zero if public stock such as schools and inefficent in terms of heat management and overlook potentials of e.g. solar roofs, ventilation, learning outcomes for pupils within schools. PPP companies are currently upgrading some schools but completely removed for any learning outcomes for puoils. Intoroduce "green measures" and involve pupils and communities. This spreads skills, knowledge and comitment to wider change.

  • Posted by BrookeLaba September 03, 2022 at 11:18

    School insulation and ventilation is vital!

  • Posted by Cvrtm September 05, 2022 at 17:00

    Why stop at the schools. If you are doing the schools, why not healthcare where the same arguments can be made. If you are going to do health then it makes sense to do the whole of the public sector and include private buildings for that matter. That way there can be true efficiencies and economies of scale. The catch is that the state has a poor track record of managing projects and it opens up all manner of questions over funding and who gets upgraded first. Superfast broadband is one project delivering one service on a fully plannable basis without needing access to individual homes, yet is years behind programme. How much harder and more expensive would it be to fully upgrade a school without major disruption to learning whilst being limited to school holidays and classroom hours. Not saying we shouldn't try, just that we need to manage it much better.
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