Schools need the right energy in the right place at the right time. That’s the goal: it’s not only essential for the provision of education, it’s fundamental for providing a safe and comfortable environment.
Easy to say, but meeting this requirement is becoming a marked challenge:
- Energy is much more expensive than 5 years ago, but budget pressures require continuous cost reduction, now more than ever.
- The energy market remains volatile, complex and opaque: it’s not getting any easier for consumers to see into it.
- Climate change requires action: the removal of fossil fuels. This implies significant change to the energy infrastructure, sooner or later. Implicit in this is that nothing done now should jeopardise the path to net-zero.
It’s not enough to do what’s right: it’s as important to avoid doing what’s wrong. But it’s not easy:
- A decision taken to reduce cost now may affect resilience or store up even greater cost in years to come.
- A carbon-driven project may increase operational risk.
- A reactive plant replacement can unwittingly close off future options.
So, how do schools navigate these three competing pressures:
- Control energy costs.
- Reduce carbon emissions responsibly, affordably, and efficiently.
- Maintain reliable, resilient infrastructure and supply.
We call this The Energy Trilemma. The challenge is not choosing between cost, carbon, or resilience: it is managing them together.