Schools waste energy waste money
npower is one of the UK’s largest electricity suppliers with over 6.6 million customers, and as part of its Climate Cop programme the energy supplier offers schools free energy audits, where after auditing energy use in Britain’s schools for the past two years, npower has discovered that each of the schools surveyed could save an average of £2,000 a year – a cumulative of 383,990 worth of CO2 – without any financial expenditure.
This comes as Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary is planning to save £2 billion in education spending however, this, latest research reveals that by simply adopting cost-free energy saving measures, schools could be saving a huge £61 million every year – where the top causes of wasted energy have been identified as leaving the heating on, relying on electric lights, and poor insulation.
33% of those schools surveyed had been found to leave their heating on too high or for too long. And whilst we are increasingly applying energy saving measures at home, a noteworthy 35% of surveyed schools npower did not have insulation on their pipe work or valves, which results in students and teachers becoming overheated in some class rooms then too cold in others.
The audit also revealed that 38% of schools do not make full use of natural daylight, leaving lights switched on, and blinds closed all day, and a further 16% had no loft insulation.
npower warned that the majority of schools had low staff awareness of how to save energy, despite the economic and environmental benefits and advised that if each of the UK’s 25,834 schools made some simple and cost-free changes saving approximately £2,000 per annum – then the potential total annual cost savings are well above £61 million together with a further 383,990 tonnes of CO2 saved.
Of the schools surveyed, secondary schools were each able to save an average of £7,700 – or 10% of their annual energy bill, with Primary schools able to save around £1,200 or 8% of their annual energy bill.
Visit www.npowermediacentre.com for full press release.