Educational

In the UK, government policy has targeted a 60% reduction in carbon emissions from new school buildings compared with a notional 2002 baseline. Mimer personnel have been involved in the design and installation of ground source heat pump systems in over 100 schools and colleges including prestigious flagship developments such as Krishna Avanti, the UK’s first state funded Hindu School and the Kavli Institute of Cosmology at Cambridge University.

Ealing Borough Council installed ground source heat pumps in all four of their new primary schools having concluded that they were the easiest and most cost effective way of meeting their renewable energy target to comply with planning policy.

Schools tend to expand in an evolutionary way and ground source heat pumps are an ideal, modular and scalable way of dealing with each new building in turn. For example the Education through Space Classroom at Camborne utilised a horizontal ground collector under the playing fields to provide heating and cooling. The next building, a new Design and Technology centre incorporated a vertical, borehole heat exchanger along the periphery of the football pitch to provide heating. These different configurations suited the building needs and site layout and were achievable through the flexibility of the technology.

It is recognised that the capital cost of renewable energy systems can be a barrier to incorporation in new schools, particularly since money cannot be transferred from the operational budget to fund the installation works. Mimer Energy has the solution by providing a fully maintained and managed service for heating and/or cooling with no upfront capital expenditure. The Mimer approach funds the installation work and the school simply purchases the energy it needs over the life of the agreement.