Five ways to make the best possible start to your energy saving this year
A warm welcome to all our new Energy Sparks schools – and to our returning schools, welcome back! Here, we share our top tips to help you make the best possible start to energy saving this year.
1. Build a team of energy saving champions
One person alone can’t drive lasting change. That’s why we recommend that you build a team of people to help your school community cut energy bills, reduce carbon emissions and inspire young climate leaders.
We suggest that at least the following people should have Energy Sparks accounts:
- A site manager or caretaker.
- A member of the senior leadership team, such as the headteacher, or business/finance manager.
- A teacher or sustainability lead working with pupils – perhaps as part of an eco-team (see below).
TIP: Find out how to add new users here.
We also strongly recommend that your main Energy Sparks account administrator and your caretaker/facilities manager are signed up to receive alerts. This will ensure that any sudden increases to your energy use are caught quickly.
Task one of your adult energy saving champions with spending 10 minutes once a week to check your school’s adult dashboard and troubleshoot issues.
2. If you haven’t already got one, set up an eco-team
We all know that energy saving is just one item on a long to-do list for school staff.
That’s why eco-teams, which are often led by pupils with guidance from a staff member, can be your best asset if you are looking to drive better energy efficiency at your school.
We have a huge array of activities and programmes designed to help pupils build core skills such as numeracy, literacy and leadership, all while helping you to cut energy use.
So whether you are adding new members to your eco-team this year or are setting one up for the first time, think about how many people will be involved, how priorities will be decided and how the team will feed back to the school leadership team and the rest of the school on what they have been doing. We have more guidance here.
TIP: If you have already set up your eco-team, don’t forget to record the activity and
secure some scoreboard points!
3. Complete one of our programmes
One of the best ways to get your energy saving year off to a good start is by completing one of our programmes. These string together related activities that pupils can work through step by step to achieve greater impact.
We recommend completing our Get Energised programme first. This starts with setting up your eco-team and familiarising yourself and your students with your energy consumption before setting a reduction target and taking some recommended actions to reduce energy consumption. At the end we guide you through how to review what you have done.
TIP: Don’t forget, when you complete a programme, your school receives
30 bonus points towards the Energy Sparks scoreboard!
If you don’t have electricity data, or if you would like to try something new or more advanced, we have a range of other programmes to choose from. We love Smart schools stay at 18 degrees and Cut out the high-carbon commute.
4. Book a training session
We have a range of free online training sessions for staff at Energy Sparks schools. Find out what’s on offer.
We provide a range of courses tailored to different roles within the school, such as school leaders and estates teams. From time to time we also run sessions on specific topics such as heating control, and invite external experts to share their insights.
Every October we run a special session on using Energy Sparks to make sure your heating is set up correctly for the coming cold weather. This one often books out fast – but don’t worry, if that happens we’ll add more tickets!
5. Stay motivated with our scoreboard competition
There are lots of ways to motivate staff and students – one of our schools has the ‘Penguin of Power’ who spends the week with the previous week’s most energy aware class.
To help schools stay motivated, Energy Sparks runs an annual scoreboard competition. We reward your energy saving efforts with points, and offer prizes to the scoreboard winners at the end of the academic year – read more here.
