SCHOOLS | BOLT-ON ENERGY HUBS The Department for Education is exploring how it can apply platform construction principles to create an innovative retrofit solution that can decarbonise schools and colleges, and facilities in other sectors. Andy Pearson reports on the energy pod concept BUNDLES OF ENERGY W ith the education sector accounting for just shy of 40% of public sector emissions, the Department for Education (DfE) is keen to explore innovative ways to support the decarbonisation of the education estate. The DfE school stock alone accounts for 25% of these emissions and is home to more than 22,000 schools that are made up of around 70,000 individual blocks, most of which are heated by gas-fired boilers. Other schools not connected to the gas grid are heated using oil-fired boilers, and even coal-fired boilers. One decarbonisation solution under consideration by the DfE is to develop a series of modular, off-site manufactured, low- or zero-carbon packaged plantrooms, known as energy pods, which could be used to replace existing heating systems. In November 2021, the then Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi described the pods as low to zero carbon plug and play technical solutions which provide heating and hot water to existing schools. Gemma Taylor, current YEN Global chair and engineering lead at DfE is heading up the project. She explains how the concept came about: We know from the BEIS-led Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (launched in 2020) that the application of decarbonisation across the education sector is met with three core challenges: decarbonisation can feel daunting for a nontechnical audience; it is expensive; and is not the key priority for our end users. As a government department, we are using our technical expertise in the built environment and construction to explore ways to unlock these challenges and make decarbonisation accessible for the sector. She says the idea for energy pods came from the success of the DfEs MMC framework and builds on its GenZero research project, which looked at ultra-low carbon standards for schools. If you can increase standardisation, you can aggregate and create a scale of economy, which allows you to start to reduce that price point. The Energy Pod research and innovation project was launched at Education Estates in October 2021, and its first phase of work is under way to establish a set of concept proposals with key principles to underpin the future development of this work. The team who have developed the thinking to date consists of Cundalls MEP team led by Ian Keeling, Mott Macdonald PM and QS team led by Rebecca Clarke, and Atkins Architectural and Structural team led by Raadiyah Rifath. Arcadis, led by James Murphy with support from Arcadis Gen, was also appointed to develop a data analysis across the whole estate, using condition data collection (CDC ) and display energy certificate (DEC) data to establish the range of loads across the portfolio. This informed the concept proposals. Market engagement sessions are being run in October and 28 September 2022 www.cibsejournal.com CIBSE Sept 22 pp28-30, 32 Energy pods.indd 28 26/08/2022 17:01