Saving the planet at school

Schools produce a lot of carbon emissions – but they can be a strong force for change, too
David Adam
The Guardian, Tuesday 27 October 2009
Built just a few years before the first bombs of the blitz began to rain on London, Fox primary school in Notting Hill is from a time when the world had other things on its mind than global warming. Its giant, single-glazed, south-facing windows leak heat during the winter and soak up stifling sunshine in the summer. Insulation, where there is any, is of a poor quality. Overall, the school building is rated as an unsatisfactory D when it comes to energy efficiency.
Buildings like this are the reason why UK schools produce more than 10m tonnes of carbon dioxide pollution each year, about 2% of Britain's carbon emissions, but 15% of those from the public sector. But they also offer an opportunity. There are 315 children at the Fox school, and most will have parents who don't think twice about flying abroad, driving when they could walk and leaving the lights on when they leave the room.
More will probably check for food miles now. The school recently held a traditional harvest festival assembly, with a green twist that only accepted British produce. Food shipped from overseas was separated and left on one side.
Paul Cotter, Fox's headteacher, says the move was part of a wider effort at the school to minimise its impact on the environment. The school is pushing for "green flag" status under the Eco-schools scheme, after being awarded the bronze and silver awards last year. "We see this very much as part of our responsibility," he says. "I want us to do everything that we can, and it is not just about the school building, but the school community as well." Cotter says his school is spreading the green message beyond the school walls, both directly, through workshops for parents, but also indirectly, through a form of green pester-power that the eco-aware children take home with them.
The school was one of the first to sign up to the 10:10 campaign, which encourages businesses, individuals, organisations and educational bodies to cut their carbon emissions by 10% during 2010. The campaign, which is supported by the Guardian, hopes to build enough grass-roots support for action to persuade Ed Miliband, energy and climate change secretary, to commit Britain to a similar target. It comes ahead of key political talks on climate change in Copenhagen in December, where officials will try to agree a new global deal on greenhouse gas emissions to succeed the Kyoto protocol.
Today, campaign group ActionAid, which is co-ordinating the schools work of the 10:10 campaign, launches an educational pack to accompany the effort, as part of its own Countdown to Copenhagen plan. ActionAid says the first 1,000 schools in England and Scotland to sign up to 10:10 will be sent the pack for free.
Action Aid says the pack, based on the film The Age Of Stupid, which was made by Franny Armstrong, the campaigner behind 10:10, is suitable for key stage 3 and above, and aims to "stimulate debate and create an alternative ending". The pack does not contain the film, but ActionAid says it "explores its key themes through a series of photocards, film clips and thought-provoking animations".
Janet Convery, head of schools and youth at ActionAid, said: "We are very inspired to see how schoolchildren really do care, not only about their environment, but also how climate change is already having such devastating effects on the lives of their peers in the developing world. I am sure that with the help of the Countdown to Copenhagen resources, thousands of young people will be able to add their voice to the debate in the run-up to what is possibly the most important summit this decade."
At Fox primary, Cotter has plans to install a £100,000 solar photovoltaic system on the roof to generate electricity, which he says would be the second biggest in the city. The school has already secured a £50,000 government grant towards the cost, but was recently turned down by the lottery fund for the rest of the money. Schools are both good and bad for solar systems, he says. They tend to have generous flat roofs, but also tend to use little electricity during the summer, when the panels are most productive. A report on renewable energy in schools from the government in 2007 says: "Solar water heating is not ideally suited to schools because of the summer holiday period when, usually, they have little or no demand, corresponding to the highest potential output of the system." Forthcoming changes in the way spare electricity generated can be sold back into the national grid should help.
Fox is also trialling new £12,000 LED strip lighting in one classroom, which was dutifully turned on for inspection when the Guardian visited the school earlier this month. Most of the time, the school relies on natural light as another energy-saving measure. Government figures suggest that lighting accounts for 10% of the energy use in a typical school.
Twice a week, the school canteen offers meat-free meals. Reflective film costing £2,500 on the windows has slashed energy used for cooling on hot days, and allowed the school to do away with four power-hungry fans. Reflective material placed behind the radiators at minimal cost has also helped. The vast majority of an average school's energy use, about 75%, goes on heating and hot water.
The next phase of Fox's green plan, Cotter says, is to investigate ground-source heat pumps to replace the school's boilers, the thermostat for which, incidentally, is placed in the school's stairwell, one of the draughtiest spots in the building.
The children are directly involved, too. The pupils have an eco-committee, whose members enforce energy-saving measures such as turning lights off when not needed. All of its nine- and 10-year-olds raise their hand when asked if they know about global warming. "I'm worried that it's going to happen," says one. "I'm not scared, but I want to stop it so it never happens, even if it's in a million years."
Bits of Al Gore's Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth documentary on climate change have been shown in school assemblies. Cotter says he feels no obligation to show sceptical films such as Channel 4's Great Global Warming Swindle, which questioned the science of climate change and was criticised by scientists and Ofcom. "We go along the lines that global warming is a fact," he says. "But we're not into scaring them. We don't say that if they have a holiday cottage in East Anglia then they had better sell it quick."
Peter Browne, a renewable energy consultant who advises schools in Sussex, says many school's efforts to go green are hampered by slow-moving local authorities, which own the buildings and must give planning consent for measures such as wind turbines. "They never tell us what we can do, only what we can't, and that can take months," he says. "Everything takes so long. They want to make 300 primary schools in West Sussex sustainable by 2020; it's taken us a year to do one."
There are success stories, though. The 2007 government report includes case studies of schools that have successfully made the transition and have cut their carbon footprints. It also lays out detailed plans of how schools can achieve the 10% saving targeted by the 10:10 campaign, both primary and secondary.
The report highlights Cassop primary school near Durham, which it described as "the only school we have found in the UK that can truly claim to be carbon neutral". This is largely thanks to a 50kW wind turbine installed in its grounds, which produces twice as much electricity as the school needs.
The central London skyline makes a wind turbine impractical at Fox primary school, but Cotter says the school is still aiming to go carbon neutral somehow. As another member of the school's eco committee puts it: "The whole school wants to save the planet and everybody in the school is trying to save the planet."
• ActionAid is giving away 1,000 of its award-winning PowerDown toolkits to the first 1,000 primary schools that sign up to 10:10. And a "Stupid Or Not? – Education for a Smarter Planet" pack will be given to the first 1,000 secondary schools that sign up.
Be part of 10:10
The 10:10 climate change campaign, supported by the Guardian, aims to get individuals, companies and institutions to reduce their carbon footprints by 10% during 2010. To find out more, go to guardian.co.uk/10-10, or sign up at www.1010uk.org. A number of schools have already signed up: find out if yours has at www.1010uk.org/education#whos_in