Sustainability and ClimaTE
Why you need a school climate action plan
This guide has been created to help schools create a climate action plan. This will help to fulfil the requirement set by the Department for Education‘s (DfE) sustainability and climate change strategy for education.
The DfE strategy states that “By 2025, all education settings will have nominated a sustainability lead and put in place a climate action plan”.
It also sets a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75% by 2037 across all education settings.
By creating a climate action plan, your school is taking the important first step to reach this target. It will also offer your school a number of other benefits. Such as:
- reduced energy bills. Using energy more efficiently can lower your schools' costs
- being more prepared. Your school will be better adapted to deal with the negative effects of climate change, such as overheating
- an opportunity for students and staff to understand more about green careers and skills
- improving your school’s reputation. You can become a leading example by showing your school is taking climate action
- improved staff and student wellbeing
As part of the DfE requirements, all school climate action plans must include at least one action from these four key areas:
- Decarbonisation
- Adaptation and resilience
- Biodiversity
- Climate education and green careers
There are also plenty of other things our school can do and other areas where we can make a change. Many of these areas also overlap.