Tarleton Academy, a 750-place new build school near Preston, was designed as one of the Department for Education's flagship pilot projects, aiming to become the UK's first academy to achieve net zero carbon in operation.
Our trademarked Energy Synergy® process has been in place since the schools opening in 2023, verifying the school's net zero carbon in operation credentials and monitoring building performance to identify opportunities for optimisation.
Exceptional levels of building performance and reduced energy demands were made possible through innovative design features including:
- Enhanced thermal building envelope with increased air-tightness, triple glazing, and reduced thermal bridging
- 1,500m² of roof-mounted photovoltaic solar panels offsetting all operational energy use
- Ground source heat pumps and roof-mounted air source heat pumps providing fossil-free energy
- Energy-efficient pool with micro-filtration rather than sand filtration, reducing pumping loads.
This highly sustainable learning environment supports staff and pupil wellbeing and performance by ensuring excellent air quality, an ideal temperature and the right amount of natural light.
While Tarleton Academy was designed to be exceptional, Energy Synergy® provided the critical verification that these ambitious targets were being met. Using advanced analytics beyond standard monitoring tools, our team confirmed the academy's net zero carbon status with robust operational data.
Combing the Energy Synergy® process with the data from the DfE's K2N monitoring system, our team of building performance experts revealed performance insights that standard monitoring missed:
- Energy consumption from the school building and swimming pool were not sub-metered with a large amount of unallocated energy identified - 21kWh/m²year - pointing to areas of consumption that had been missed.
- Underperformance of the solar PV array resulting in reduced energy generation was identified and fully operational by February 2024.
This focus on sustainability from the design stage helped Tarleton Academy perform well below DfE's Energy Use Intensity (EUI) benchmark for a standard secondary school - achieving actual EUI of 67Wh/m2/yr compared to the target of 95Wh/m2/yr - even when including the consumption from the pool.
Energy Synergy® analysis resulted in an estimated energy saving of 29% compared to the modelled energy consumption. That's a carbon saving of 33.5tCO2e and resulted in an annual cost saving of nearly £50,000.
Anthony Dillon, Managing Director, said:
“Tarleton Academy is a world class learning environment, net zero carbon in operation, and benefited from our extensive EnergySynergy® performance monitoring process to reduce costs.”
