The Potential Effects Of Energy Prices On The Delicate Balance Between Proper Heating And Ventilation In Our Colleges, Institutions, And Schools
By Simon Jones, Head of Air Quality, Ambisense.
The cost of everything is at the forefront of public and private discourse as the cost of living crisis persists on a widespread level throughout the UK. This also applies to the field of education, where cost is a major concern. It goes without saying that the cost of electricity is currently the most urgent issue for all.
Depending on where you live in the UK and Ireland, it’s estimated that anywhere between a half and three quarters of households could be in fuel poverty by January 2023. This social issue will be rampant across schools - it will impact staff, students and teachers, as well as food programmes, absenteeism, health and wellbeing and, not least, mental health.
The hikes can be anything between a doubling and a five or six times rise over this time last year, depending on how you negotiate energy pricing for your school, and a little bit of luck with when contracts start and end. With this impending increase, it is hard to not feel as though you are stuck in between a rock and a hard place.
A fear for ventilation and air quality many in the field have is that, understandably, people are likely to have other concerns on their mind. As we approach the second of two winters of sitting in often cold classrooms, will people simply be too fatigued to focus on doing the right things again when it comes to maintaining ventilation and managing air quality?
It’s not just schools of course - the temptation to close things down, hunker down and seal things up is going to be hard to ignore, regardless of the sector or situation. As a result, in that environment, air quality is eventually going to suffer.
COVID, flu, colds, asthma, chest infections, concentration and performance, chronic exposure to VOCs, radon, mould and damp conditions – the list is long, and the impacts of this winter, and perhaps the next, may be visible for years to come. What we have learnt from our experience of COVID-19 and the importance of air quality is crucial to this argument - however, how much that is, only time can tell.
Moving schools towards a fully mechanically ventilated state where we can regulate how much air people get and when is, in my opinion, the long-term fix. Additionally, heat recovery to reduce heat loss is necessary because of the high volumes of air movement needed in these areas. Of course, doing this will be expensive, complicated, and time-consuming - but it is worth it.
So, in the short term, how do we provide adequate air quality to schools at the volumes they need - while not blowing heating budgets through the roof in the process? It will likely require a combination of carefully thought-out and prepared supplemental measures, such as UVC or air cleaners, along with the ventilation systems already present in schools. My hope is that we get past the scenario of panic buying that we had last winter and instead adopt a deliberate, focused, risk-assessed strategy that considers the implementation of these technologies and solutions over a longer period of time.
Schools are incredibly complex environments with a huge range of building types, age and infrastructure. Most are naturally ventilated and the use of the ventilation is down to human behaviour. Depending on the size of the school or institution you could have many hundreds or thousands of spaces to be considered at any one time.
All of this begins with a careful and thorough risk evaluation of the assets and the creation of a strategy to meaningfully minimise the risk. Because you can't manage what you can't measure, like with any risk, monitoring the school environment is crucial.
Without data that analyses the performance of the assets and unpacks it in a meaningful way, how can you create a plan for these spaces? I don't think you can, and I think you'll keep making assumptions that, given the fuel situation, will put air quality and ventilation in jeopardy.
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