The Community Inclusive Trust (CIT) is an education charity working in partnership with local communities to provide not-for-profit mainstream and special needs education.

The Trust was formed in 2014, and now consists of 7 mainstream primaries, 7 special schools, and the LEARN SEND Hub.

The Trust’s schools enhance the education provision of the communities they serve and improve the life chances of the pupils who attend CIT schools. This is driven and supported by high quality central services and CIT’s in-house specialist SEND training provider, LEARN.

The Challenge.

Community Inclusive Trust wanted to reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption across their fourteen schools. A comprehensive plan was agreed to deliver this objective for the Trust, spanning LED lighting for 8 schools, MY ZeERO intelligent monitoring for fourteen schools and onsite solar generation for 11 schools.

In order to correctly size the solar requirements, LED lighting and MY ZeERO were scoped first, followed by eSolar. The Trust were looking for all solutions to be delivered via our  Energy as a Service/ Operating Lease models  in order to eliminate the need for upfront capital investment.

The Solution.

The agreed solution for the Trust consisted of the installation of energy-efficient LED lighting to help improve teaching environments, plus MY ZeERO smart monitoring to validate savings from LED lighting and solar and to provide clear and actionable data to help the Trust eliminate energy waste.

The lighting installation comprised of a point-for-point replacement of 1666 luminaires across 8 schools. Installation was conducted out-of-hours in order to minimise operational disruption to the school estate.

The solar system comprised of the installation of 426 kWp rooftop solar PV systems across 11 schools, meaning the Trust can generate its own clean energy and reduce its reliance on purchasing expensive the energy from the grid to significantly cut energy costs and reduce carbon emissions.

As part of eEnergy’s energy-as-a-service offering, the technology has been installed with no upfront cost to the Trust.

The Results.

In total, the combined energy savings from the installation of LED lighting, MY ZeERO intelligent monitoring and rooftop solar PV, are forecast to deliver a net saving to the Trust of almost £795k over the next 10 years, during a time  when energy prices have soared.

• 106.6 annual TC02e saving from lighting, MY ZeERO and solar
• £153,000 10-year net saving from lighting and MY ZeERO
• 70% reduction in electricity costs from lighting and MY ZeERO
• £28k Year 1 Gross savings from lighting and MY ZeERO
• £3.65m 25-year net saving from solar
• 25% self-sufficiency in electricity generation