North-East Further Education college — combined net-zero programme

Starting position

A North-East Further Education college with a mid-sized estate, term-time variable load profile, ageing import metering and a long-standing relationship with the regional incumbent energy supplier. The procurement function was hands-off — renewals were a once-a-year price comparison rather than a planned, structured event.

The leadership team had set a net-zero target aligned with FE-sector reporting standards but had no credible interventions sequenced to actually deliver against it. There was a generic sustainability strategy and a separate energy contract — but the two had never been joined up into a single delivery roadmap.

What we did

1. Procurement review

The first move was unglamorous: take the procurement function from a single-fix renewal model into a smarter, multi-supplier competitive process aligned with the academic year. We normalised quotes across the supplier panel, surfaced where the incumbent had been quietly losing competitiveness, and presented a written recommendation with the case for and against each option.

2. Solar PV across two roof areas

Two roof areas were structurally suitable for solar. We modelled the system to match the college's term-time load profile — sized so most of the generation displaced grid imports during the academic day rather than being exported at low rates. Funding was modelled across CapEx, PPA and EaaS options, with the trust ultimately selecting the route that best fit its capital cycle.

3. Half-hourly metering modernisation

Both import and export metering were modernised to support half-hourly settlement and to feed data into Yolk. For the first time the estates and finance teams could see when consumption was actually happening — which informed shift planning and surfaced two pieces of plant running unnecessarily through holidays.

4. Water audit and retailer switch

We audited two years of water invoices, identified historic billing errors and ran a competition across the deregulated business water retailers. The switch delivered both immediate retail savings and a more responsive in-life service relationship.

5. SECR and trust reporting

Every intervention was captured in the trust's annual carbon and energy reporting — with clean evidence trails for the energy purchasing decisions, solar generation, export and water interventions. The annual report became defensibly accurate rather than carefully vague.

Outcomes

• Energy spend: reduced through both better purchasing and solar self-consumption.
• Carbon footprint: Scope 2 emissions reduced materially via solar; Scope 1 unchanged (no fuel-switching in scope this round).
• Water spend: reduced via competitive retailer switch plus historic error recoveries.
• Reporting quality: the trust's annual energy and carbon disclosures became audit-clean and trustee-defensible.
• Operational visibility: for the first time, the estates and finance teams shared a single source of truth on energy.

The lesson

FE colleges (and more broadly, the education sector) often have ambitious net-zero ambitions but no credible delivery roadmap — because the procurement, the kit, the reporting and the budget sit in separate functions. Bringing them under a single account director with a single roadmap, and then sequencing the interventions in the right order, is what turns "we have a target" into "we hit the target."