Green energy team is honoured

A NATIONAL award has been given to the company responsible for cutting a Hinckley school’s heating costs and reducing its carbon emissions.

Comedian Jimmy Carr presented Leicester based Green Fox Community Energy Co-operative with an award for the Best Commercial Renewable Heat Project at the Solar Power Portal Awards held in Birmingham.

The award is in recognition of the company’s installation of biomass boiler at Hinckley Academy, which replaced a previous oil-run heating system at the Butt Lane school.

Green Fox director Simon Butt said: “We have been working with Hinckley Academy since 2013 and launched the first community energy share offer in the UK, which aimed to heat the school with renewable heat rather than with their old oil-guzzling boilers.”

Project investors became members of the John Cleveland College Community Woodheat Co- operative and raised just under £600,000 which paid for the purchase and installation of the 800 kW biomass boiler in 2014.

The renewable project planned to reduce Hinckley Academy’s £200,000 annual oil bill and slash the schools’ carbon emissions.

During its first year of operation, in 2015, the school saved £36,000 in fuel and maintenance costs and reduced its carbon emmissions by 404 tonnes.

Green Fox has since installed high efficiency gas boilers in a second boiler house at the school, along with a 50 kWp array of photvoltaic electricity generating panels on the roof of its design department.