• THANK you for highlighting the critical challenge facing our schools as a result of the energy crisis, (Headteachers: Hikes in school energy bills are giving use sleepless nights, September 8).

Power Up North London (PUNL) is helping schools, including Hampstead, to produce more of their own energy by installing solar power, reducing energy bills.

While many schools have solar, far too many don’t. Camden Council recently gave us the green light to work with two more secondary schools, including Regent High School, cited in your article, to install solar.

With school and council budgets stretched, PUNL offers technical help. We can also mobilise funds through community share offers, freeing schools to use their scarce resources on teaching and learning. Increasing the supply of cheap, clean energy is only one side of the equation, however.

Our work with schools has shown that there is massive potential to reduce energy bills significantly through behaviour change, without negatively affecting teaching and learning. Simple measures like turning off whiteboards and computers when not in use can deliver big savings.

We have estimated that if every primary school in Camden adopted these measures, it would save £200,000 and 500 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year. Secondary school savings would be much higher.

Our pilot with one primary school in the borough shows that it can be done: they reduced their energy use by 40 per cent in just five weeks.

Clearly energy markets need to be reformed. But there are solutions and actions that we can take at a local level to build energy security locally.

We urge Camden to support radical energy efficiency measures in all the buildings it is responsible for, and to find ways of cutting red tape so that more community-owned and managed renewable energy projects can be delivered more quickly.

DR JOANNA MACRAE
Chair, Power Up North London