£80 million for solar on 200 schools

You may have heard in the news last week that GB Energy, the Government-owned renewable energy investment body, has announced £80 million for solar on 200 schools.

This is great news for a handful of schools and many schools will be wondering if they are eligible for some of that funding.  

We thought it would be helpful to put this news story into perspective for interested schools. So here's a summary of what we know: 

1.        Most of the funding from GB Energy has been pre-allocated to the Department for Educations's (DfE) decarbonisation pilot scheme run by LocatEd, which aims to fund about 150 schools in three specific regions.

Around 50 schools in the North East, North West and West Midlands will be selected by each of the winners of the LocatEd tenders in conjunction with the DfE. The selection is set against criteria including areas of high deprivation and other factors, such as readiness for solar to be completed by year end. The DfE/LocatED encouraged Solar for Schools to bid for this tender, and so we have joined one of the leading consortia in the pilot. Schools to be included as part of the pilot will be announced in around June this year.   

2.        Following our on-going conversations with the team at GB Energy, it is probable that the DfE will be allocating the rest of these initial funds for a limited number of fully-funded systems. There are over 28,000 schools in England, Wales and Scotland, so unfortunately the chance of being one of the remaining 50 schools is low.

3.        Longer term, GB Energy is considering means to ‘crowd in’ third party funding, rather than try and fund everything itself. Based on conversations so far, GB Energy would probably do this in a similar manner to the way we work with National Grid, deploying partial grants. Allocating grants as needed to schools where the economics of solar would otherwise not work, for instance on smaller primary schools. Therefore, if you work for or manage a large school where the economics already work for solar that is third party funded you are unlikely to be eligible. It is also unclear yet how much the total GB Energy budget will be allocated to solar on schools, versus other large-scale low carbon technologies, such as wind turbines or ground-mounted solar.

Read on to see our action plan...

1.        There is an urgency by GB Energy to deploy its funds soon. Being ready to install a solar panel system could be key to securing some of that funding. Planning consent, grid permission and surveys can take 3-6 months, so to be ready you would need to start your development process within the next few weeks.   

2.        We actively seek grants to support schools and if your school is eligible for either partial or even full grant funding, we can help you apply for it, particularly if your school project is ‘shovel’ ready. No installation will take place until we have explored all options to reduce the capital cost of a system.    

3.        If the school is not eligible for GB Energy funding, but is still economically viable - meaning your school would save money from going ahead with either your own funds or a community funded system - then you are well-placed to have a solar system by the end of the summer.  

 We are in close contact with the Department for Education and are speaking with GB Energy regularly, we will update interested schools here on our blog and via our newsletters with further developments as soon as we know more. 

Watch this space...