A multi-million pound innovative heating network at Comberton Village College is now up and running following 18 months of work to create the largest Ground Source Heat Pump network at a secondary school in the UK.
This £3.1m project means that the College, located just outside Cambridge, has reduced the site’s carbon emissions from heating by 70%. Switching from aging oil boilers to this greener heating alternative is anticipated to save the College thousands of pounds a year on their energy bills.
The project has been a collaboration between The Cam Academy Trust, which oversees the College, and Cambridgeshire County Council with works carried out by Bouygues Energies & Services.
An array of 60 boreholes running 200m deep are connected to two large ground source heat pumps. The heat is then piped to 11 plant rooms around the large site providing up to 705kW of heat to the college. The 141kW solar photovoltaic panels previously installed across three roofs help to power the heat pumps.
The project has been funded by a £1.2 million investment from Cambridgeshire County Council and a £1.9 million government grant from the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS). The PSDS scheme was initiated by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and is delivered by their funding partners, Salix Finance. The PSDS aims to put the public sector at the forefront of decarbonising buildings in the UK.
A lease between Cambridgeshire County Council and the Trust allows the Council to recover its investment, with the savings delivered on energy bills used to fund the Trust’s lease payments.
The project has been delivered by Bouygues Energies & Services, a global leader in energy, digital and industrial transformation, for Cambridgeshire County Council under the terms of the Re:fit 3 Framework Agreement which enables energy efficiency and local energy generation projects in the public sector. A key feature of the project agreement is a performance guarantee on the projected energy savings.
Councillor Lorna Dupré, chair of Cambridgeshire County Council’s Environment & Green Investment Committee, said:
“Our vision is to deliver net-zero carbon emissions for Cambridgeshire as a county by 2045. The Comberton Village College project is a great example of how the county council is working in communities with stakeholders like Bouygues Energies & Services and the Cam Academy Trust to deliver this. The low carbon heat network not only ensures that we are doing our part to tackle climate change but is also a great example of how to retrofit low carbon heating on other sites.”
Stephen Munday, Cam Academy Trust Chief Executive, said:
“We are absolutely delighted to have been able to help to oversee this major development at Comberton Village College. From every perspective, this has to be judged a very good and a very desirable way forward. We are strongly committed to green environmental approaches across all our schools, both in terms of education and approaches to our sites. This is a very powerful example of this. It also makes complete sense in terms of future energy costs and putting more of our future funding into education provision rather than high energy bills. It is the sort of investment in public buildings that many of us would want and hope to see across our country moving forward.”
Salix Finance Programme Manager, Kirsty Adamson said:
“We are delighted to see how this project has progressed and to understand how well the different stakeholders have worked together.
The Comberton Village College is a truly collaborative project which will help Cambridgeshire County Council meet its ambitious net zero targets.
Hopefully this will inspire, not only other schools to decarbonise their estates, but of course the future generations coming up through the education system.”
Miles Messenger, Energy Engineering Director at Bouygues Energies & Services, stated:
“We are proud to have successfully delivered this innovative low carbon heat network scheme at Comberton Village College for Cambridgeshire County Council to help them meet their net zero target.
The project will not only deliver significant energy and cost savings, but is testament to the Authority’s and the college’s commitment to addressing the climate emergency.
As an energy and engineering partner, we’ve supported in translating this commitment into a successful project. This unique scheme is just one example of how we can deliver a significant long-term carbon reduction safely and with minimal disruption to the site’s operation in a live school environment.”
