Tackling climate crisis with Energy Sparks
Aspire Academy Trust is delighted to be working with Energy Sparks, a registered charity that provides a unique, online school-specific energy management tool and education programme to help schools cut their energy bills and carbon footprint. Over 800 primary, secondary and special schools across the UK are already using Energy Sparks with 400,000 pupils able to access education opportunities to improve energy and carbon literacy.
Energy Sparks’ vision is a sustainable future in which the school community is at the heart of measurable action to tackle climate change. It equips children and young people with the knowledge, skills, and tools to take measurable action in their school and wider community to reduce carbon emissions and enables school leaders, staff and communities to better understand and reduce their school’s energy consumption and measures to reduce their carbon footprint.
Using a school’s electricity, gas and solar data, Energy Sparks shows pupils and staff how much energy they are consuming each day. The online tool presents bespoke analysis of this energy data with action prompts, and energy-saving priorities displayed via pupil and staff dashboards and weekly alert emails.
Energy Sparks has currently over 140 energy and sustainability education activities and curriculum resources which pupils can engage in, either via Eco Councils or as part of classroom learning. These activities support children's understanding of climate change and the importance of reducing carbon emissions, enable children to investigate energy use around the school site, provide action prompts to help reduce energy use and effective ways to spread the energy saving and carbon reduction message across the wider school community.
Energy Sparks also has over 60 adult-led action ideas designed for site managers and school leadership with supporting guidance on saving energy through behaviour change, heating system configuration changes, policies, operational changes and changes to building fabric.
Energy Sparks is providing subsidised access to its services for the Aspire Academy Trust, thanks to funding from the OVO Foundation. Staff across all 37 Aspire settings will have access to free online training, weekly energy use alert emails, newsletters and online support with energy management and sustainability education queries.
For more information on Energy Sparks, please visit their website below:
Energy Sparks: A school introduction pack
To access a selection of case studies showing the savings and learnings gained at participating schools, please click the link below: