Using display energy certificates to quantify schools' energy consumption

The UK non-domestic sector accounts for 2 million buildings and 19%of national CO2 emissions, representing a significant opportunity for emission reductions. However, substantial improvement of the stock requires a greater understanding of current energy performance characteristics. This paper explores energy consumption in English schools, using data from the Display Energy Certificates (DECs) database. DECs are a key step in understanding the non-domestic stock, incorporating national-scale statistical data, covering bottom-up details of the individual buildings. Significant variations in emissions between primary and secondary schools and academies exist, primarily caused by large differences in electricity consumption. Considering pupil numbers is shown to accentuate the differences, revealing a 47% rise in CO 2 emissions per pupil from primary to secondary schools, and a further increase between secondary schools and academies. The extent to which building characteristics, including location, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) and size, influence performance has also been evaluated. Location, HVAC and school density are shown to correlate with variations in energy use. Finally, a comparison of current school performance against past data reveals considerable reductions in fossil-thermal energy consumption over the last decade. However, this has been offset by a significant increase in electricity consumption, resulting in rising typical emissions across the school types.