Solar panels combat more than climate change

Solar panels combat more than climate change A little over a year ago I found myself clambering through a skylight on to the roof of Fox school, a primary nestled in a back street in London's Notting Hill. Their plan to increase £10,000 in a single term raised eyebrows, but what the team lacked in experience and local affluence, they made up for in creativity and ambition. The model worked. Parents, friends and former pupils chipped in, either online or at events such as cake sales, comedy nights, quizzes and discos. 5 tonnes and provide £1,500 in savings and feed-in tariff payments each year for 25 years. By Christmas, the total had passed £11,000, enough to pay for the 3. Something like Fox's solar roof. 10:10 trained the organising team in each school and also provided blogging and email tools. With little fundraising experience and an economically mixed catchment area, EP Collier wasn't an obvious candidate for a solar success story. Both groups, we realised, needed a way to get all their pupils or staff more engaged - which meant having something exciting, tangible and ambitious to aim for. It should cut the school's carbon footprint by around 1. Even better than that, from 10:10's perspective, each successful school would become a visible and empowering example of a community working together to solve climate change. In September, she recruited a small team and got to work. Today marks the start of the national rollout of the project, and for the next two weeks schools across the UK can apply to take part. You cannot actually see EP Collier's new rooftop solar panels from the playground, but there's no missing the pride and enthusiasm that put them there. Pupils' friends and family, former students and local businesses could sponsor little squares of solar roof by buying £5 vouchers or taking part in tried-and-tested fundraisers such as cake sales. The project has also provided, in Shorland's words, "the most phenomenal morale boost for our school and community". Solar panels combat more than climate change Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 04/05/2012