Decarbonising the Kingsley School Estate
Kingsley School is a co-ed independent day and boarding school in the heart of North Devon with around 450 students ranging from nursery ages up to 6th form. Sitting in roughly 12 hectares of land and being located within the UNESCO North Devon Biosphere and on the doorstep of the only world surf reserve in the UK, the environment plays a significant role in everything that goes on in school. This is optimised by the founding of the ‘Earth Centre’ concept in 2019 where new school owners felt the school needed to double down on its unique setting and centre everything around sustainability and environmentalism to assist all pupils in developing a deep understanding of the challenges, opportunities and solutions related to the world around them. As such the ‘Earth Centre’ concept percolates through school life and strategy ensuring that sustainability, environmentalism, and ecology is imbedded in everything that goes on in school; from the curriculums that are taught to the way that the grounds are managed or how the estate is run. One core pillar of the strategy laid out in 2019 was the decarbonisation of the school estate with an aspiration for net-zero by 2027; fast-forward to 2024 and lots has changed, with great progress made in the last few years on several areas.
Decarbonisation of a school can occur at any time, it doesn’t need to be grand and wildly world changing, it just needs to be specific to the school. The way that we approached this was to conduct a full carbon footprint audit of the school; primarily to collect data for diagnosis of the site and secondly to act as a benchmark so that any improvements could be quantified to satisfy governors and owners of the progress made and act as evidence that certain steps and improvements were financially beneficial and that these decarbonising efforts deserve to be on the school strategy.
Divided between 3 scopes, a carbon footprint consists of 3 areas; scope 1 are the emissions from sources that a school owns or controls directly, scope 2 are emissions that a school causes indirectly and come from where the energy it purchases and uses is produced, and finally scope 3 are the emissions a school is indirectly responsible for up and down its supply chain. So, the reality is that to decarbonise school campus certain offsite activities also need to be thought about closely.
Beneath are detailed certain ways that the ‘Earth Centre’ concept at Kingsley School has been pushing the decarbonisation of the school forward. Due to the embedment of this process within the school curriculum and the full years data being collected prior to students getting involved, the schools published footprint is always 2 years behind the current academic year, with the students then calculating the previous year. This doesn’t necessarily need to be the case, just the way that is has been designed here.
Scope 1
A step we have taken towards addressing our scope 1 values is the greater monitoring of our school run minibus fleet. Whilst electrification is on the agenda, financially at the moment this isn’t a step that can be taken. As a result, more careful monitoring of the school minibuses has been employed so that non-essential trips are reduced and an understanding of the impact our fleet has is better understood. Contributing roughly 10% of our 21-22 carbon footprint at around 50 tCO2e, percentage wise it doesn’t seem like much, but it is something that direct control can be taken over through policy and planning. Changes employed since have been the inclusion of carbon emission calculation within trip planning so that teachers wanting to use minibuses have to directly address the carbon associated with the transport manager and that and if deemed unnecessarily high or if the transport is not being used efficiently then adjustments are suggested. The school arranged bus routes have also been redesigned, reducing the number of smaller minibuses on the road in the morning and evening and replacing them with a larger more efficient coach. These adjustments have seen a reduction last year by 4% in transport associated tCO2e and an estimated additional 6% this year with the recent introduction of the coach.
Due to being a boarding school the energy consumption on the site has a more continual output but of varying type; during the day energy peaks are due to electricity in the main school building (scope 2) and gas from the kitchens. In the evenings and weekends consumption shifts to the boarding houses with electricity (scope 2) and gas for heating and hot water. Within scope 1 the energy that is addressable is the volume of gas burnt, with historic pre change volumes generating a CO2 equivalent of 258 tonnes. We have yet to look at the specific consumption data and quantify changes in the kitchens due to a new catering team taking over in recent years and their improvements/changing of practices being ongoing. But one improvement we have seen is with the installation of air-source heat pumps within some of the Prep school classrooms and boarding facilities. This has reduced consumption of gas on site and whilst not substantial enough to create drastic change within our overall carbon footprint. Has been enough for future consideration for these units when replacement of outdated units arises. This has been supported during the boarding house refurbishments with the replacement of old glazing units, thus reducing the lost heat energy.
Scope 2
Our largest current progress in terms of our scope 2 has been through the transition to a ‘green energy tariff’ for our electricity. This was done through our energy brokers, with the electricity being supplied to the school coming from renewable and green sources. The results of this were a reduction of 75tCO2e of our carbon footprint associated with our electricity supply to 0. This obviously presents great potential for the impact it has on other elements of our carbon footprint; for instance, if all boilers could transition to air or ground source heat pumps then the electricity associated with the running of those units would still generate nothing towards our carbon footprint, as would the full electrification of our minibus fleet, reducing the associated CO2 of our school run transport to 0. Both of which having profound impacts on Scope 1 measurements.
The next steps that we are taking towards our scope 2 comes in the form of the development and installation of a large onsite solar array. Whilst initial surveys have taken place and sizes of systems spec’d to the school’s requirements, this forward momentum has slowed due to the return of investment (ROI) changes in recent years when compared to the same outcome of 0 CO2e tariffs. Obviously, there are other considerations in terms of energy security and income from supplying excess energy back to the grid but currently these are being outweighed by other factors. The added complication to our system is the location of it. Due to the sporadic nature of the school buildings and the most attractive location being that of the sports hall roof or a large bank near the sports hall, this presents certain issues with the energy’s consumption. Plainly the energy produced by a system needs to be consumed at the meter that the system is hooked up to, for us our consumption is not required at the sports hall but the main school building and boarding houses. To address this, meters would need to be removed and changed with new cabling laid. All of which contributes towards extra cost and complication and ultimately the decisions made to move forward or not so.
Scope 3
Scope 3 is a minefield for any business, but for a school with a varying and large supply chain it is a mountain to climb. It is in scope 3 that we are continuing to perfect our monitoring and measurement and may actually see an increase in our value over the coming years as we learn how to include more components of scope 3.
With support from a local energy consultant (361 Energy) using the financial data we have on our suppliers we calculated the associated carbon footprint. The general rule of thumb recommended to us was that the top 10% of spend in a supply chain will likely constitute 90% of the associated supply chain emissions. With scope 3 there is also a decision to be made as to when you being absorbing your suppliers carbon footprint; is it at the point of a product being created? or when it is shipped? or when it arrives at your door? There is no hard and fast rule, so we elected to absorb scope 3 within our footprint at the point of creation of a product. As a result, our scope 3 in the 21-22 academic year constituted 45% of our overall footprint at 262tCO2e. Moving forward, policy is being brought into place surrounding the consideration of suppliers and establishing thresholds to insure careful purchasing. But as mentioned above, a supply chain in a school is a tough nut to crack, and we continue to work on it.
A component of scope 3 at the opposite end of the supply chain is the volume of waste produced. In steps to address this, our waste management was changed to Southwest Metals. They operate a ‘Zero-to-landfill’ service so that now not only our recycled waste is repurposed, but our general waste is also sorted, recycled, reused, and avoids ending up in landfill. This supports the on-site composting that we already do for all our food waste produced, so that it is used on site in our ecology zone and market garden. The quantifying of these improvements in terms of the implications on the school’s carbon footprint is ongoing with attention being turned to this in the current academic year as part of the curriculum.
We have addressed reduction in water wastage by working with Southwest Water. They came and completed a full water efficiency audit of the school site and fitted water saving devices and fixed any leaks around sinks, taps, showers etc. Estimate savings from motion sensing urinal cistermisers come in at 396,000liters a year, toilet cistern bags at around 328,000l and aerators on taps and showers saving around 460,000l. All told the savings that Southwest water predict based upon the devices installed come in at 1,184,000 litres, roughly half an Olympic swimming pool. How this translates to decarbonisation is through the associated reduction of the wastewater processing; for this volume of savings the reduction of our carbon footprint is around 322tCO2e per year. We have also stopped using mop and bucket systems for our cleaning practices across the school site and are now using flat mopping systems that use up to 90% less water.
Another step that is being developed this year is beginning to tap into quantifying the commuting data of staff and students. This is currently being done by students during lesson time but the provisional data being generated by them suggests that the associated CO2e of all of this is around 187 tonnes. This will obviously show an increase in our carbon footprint in comparison to previous years as this wasn’t calculated prior, but as mentioned above, that is part of the journey we as a school are on in developing this in house monitoring. In tern this data will allow us to begin thinking about ways to improve the commutes of our community, with suggestions already being made of organised lift sharing, more buses, and the deployment of cycle to work schemes.
Sequestering
The other side of the balance that we often hear about is ‘offsetting’, whilst in theory it makes sense Kingsley has swayed away from focusing our efforts on the direct offsetting of our emissions and rather sought to address the emissions themselves with the previously described methods. That being said we have employed methods within the school grounds that do sequester carbon, locking it in; but have not included these measurements of carbon sequestration within our overall carbon footprint calculations.
During the 22-23 academic year over 1500 trees were planted, adding to the 3500+ planted over the 4 years prior over 2.5 hectares. This has continued into this academic year with trees being source for free from The Woodland Trust. These obviously go someway in locking up CO2 with the estimated values of these newly planted trees locking in around 2 tCO2e per hectare per year, alongside our more established woodlands (5.5ha) pulling down around 10 tCO2e per hectare per year.
A larger component of the sequestration in our school grounds is our ecology zone consisting of nine “no-dig” regenerative permaculture-focused beds; Not only does this provide nutrient-rich food for the students (with no food miles), but also supports carbon reduction. No-dig practices, speeds up carbon sequestration in the soil, locking down more carbon, faster. And with soils potential to hold carbon being more than biomass (vegetation) and the atmosphere combined it makes great sense to us to look at supporting the growth of this store.
As discussed throughout this article we are still on a journey. Our methods of measuring are constantly improving so variation is to be expected. As is the change in the number of factors and variables included within the overall value assigned to the carbon footprint. Clarity in this is important so that others know what our final figures represent and the meaning behind them. For more information and further clarity, The Independent Schools Council and Planet Mark published a research paper titled ‘Supporting Independent Schools on the Road to Net Zero & Sustainability’. The report delves into ways schools can enhance sustainability and transition to net zero. From data-driven strategies to engaging students, the report highlights the pathway to a sustainable and cost-effective future for schools which we have found very useful for support but also as a benchmark for comparing our figures to other schools
Source
Jack Harty, Earth Centre Director, Kingsley School Devon
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