Students think about future energy issues

On Friday 25th June, Katharine Lady Berkeley’s School Energy Management Team (SEMT) took part in a two hour inter-school sharing event hosted by the SEMT at Chosen Hill School, Churchdown.

The Severn Wye Energy Agency’s (SWEA) 2010 Young Energy People (YEP) project event saw Matt Thames, Project Manager at Magnox North deliver a presentation about his role as Project Manager in the nuclear power industry. The presentation generated interesting discussions from the students in years 7, 8 & 9 who asked probing questions such as ‘ what alternative options are there for disposing of nuclear waste’ and ‘when Oldbury power station is decommissioned what will be the impact in terms of employment’.

KLB and Chosen Hill SEMTs

Esme Wardhaugh, a Year 9 pupil from Chosen Hill, said “It was a very good talk and opened up a whole range of horizons”.

Following the talk the students, trained earlier this year by SWEA to carry out a technical energy survey on their school building, presented their findings and compared the similarities between their schools before jointly planning a series of energy awareness days.

Julie Parsons Teacher at Chosen Hill School said: “It was great to see how the two schools face similar issues in terms of energy consumption and we look forward to working with KLB in the future”.

The teams will now work to set targets to reduce energy consumption in their school through the launching of an energy efficiency campaign during the next academic year.

Cllr Jackie Hall, Cabinet Member for Schools, said: This sounds like a very interesting and useful experience for the students from both schools and I’m sure that it has deepened their understanding of the energy issues we face in the future.”

The next YEP! event will take place on Tuesday 13th July at Pate’s Grammar School when six School Energy Management Teams from participating schools go head to head in an inter-school quiz, in a bid to become the 2010 Young Energy People Energy Champions.