School celebrates birthday with refreshed eco environment

A primary school will celebrate an important milestone this year with a more modern ecofriendly learning environment.

Work has been completed at Ysgol Pentrecelyn to improve on site energy efficiency.

Denbighshire County Council’s Energy and Building Maintenance teams worked together with school staff to improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and provide long term cost savings at the site.
The Council’s Energy team has delivered and is working on several projects to help improve council building energy efficiency and also support the reduction of carbon emissions and usage costs over the longer term.

Recently the Energy Team reached a landmark of over a megawatt of installed renewable energy capacity (1099kWp). The majority of this energy is generated from roof mounted solar PV panels.
Work carried out at Ysgol Pentrecelyn by the Energy team includes topping up pitched roof insulation on the site buildings, insulating cavity wall sections, installing LED efficient lighting and adding a solar PV system to help lower electricity grid energy usage and costs.

This was complimented by the Council’s Building Maintenance team who replaced old boilers with modern condensing units, single glazed windows with modern and efficient double-glazed units, replaced a flat roof on site and also upgraded the insulation to 160mm of PIR insulation.

Together this work will reduce the schools carbon footprint by nearly 8,000kg of carbon a year, helping to also lower the cost of energy use at the same time as delivering an improved learning environment.
The school will celebrate its 150th on May 11 and also as part of the important milestone Key Stage 2 pupils have worked with Young Enterprise and SARN Associates to create a farming and financial literacy focused resource, called Seren’s Farm. This resource is a bespoke, bilingual (Welsh and English) workbook connecting farming with financial and enterprise skills.

Headteacher Andrew Evans said: “We are celebrating our 150th birthday in May and it is fantastic we are reaching this milestone with our school buildings refreshed and ready to provide a more modern energy efficiency environment to improve learning for pupils today and those who come to us in the future.

“Working with the Council has enabled us to lower our carbon footprint and deliver an improved environment for both our children and staff which is steeped in traditional history in an area of outstanding beauty and we are really grateful to them for making this happen.

Cllr Barry Mellor, Lead Member for Environment and Transport, said: “We are committed to reducing our carbon emissions and energy usage across all our buildings by carrying out projects that will also see costs reduce in the long term. I’m grateful to our staff with the support of the school staff and the pupils for allowing us to carry out this important work at Ysgol Pentrecelyn in such an important milestone year for the school.”