The closing session ‘Approaches to Achieving Net Zero’ will be a sharing of strategies and approaches to address the climate challenges in the education estate across England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland.

Hershil Patel, Head of Energy and Crawford Wright, Head of Architecture and Design: Schools and Colleges, from Department for Education will be presenting on current strategies and approaches. 

Stephen Long and Steven Anderson, Associate Directors at the Scottish Futures Trust, will provide an update on their Learning Estate Investment Programme which includes both Operational and Embodied carbon targets which are tied into an Outcome Based Funding model for 25 years post completion.

Welsh Government will be represented by Neal O Leary, Programme Director for the Sustainable Communities for Learning.

Michael Walsh from Department of Education, Ireland will share insights from the Department’s school sector decarbonisation pathfinder programme.  The learning from the programme is ensuring that new design approaches and technologies are introduced to the school sector with an evidence based approach.  Michael’s presentation will show technical lessons from 5 years of pathfinder projects.