by Sophy

The other day I was lucky enough to catch up with 10:10 over lunch at their HQ in Camden (lovely veggie sandwiches and vegan wraps) and hear all about their fantastic new campaign to put solar panels on school rooftops.

There are a few similar ideas around, but what makes 10:10’s Solar Schools stand out from the rest is how they are taking the funding model which Franny Armstrong used with great effect to make her iconic climate-change film “Age of Stupid” and applying it to solar panels – crowdsourcing.

Here’s how it works: through a clever website each participating school gets a virtual ‘solar roof’ made up of lots of individual tiles. The tiles are for sale for just £5 each – well within the pocket-money range of most eco-conscious kids – and once you’ve bought a tile you can personalise it with your own image or message. Local businesses can buy and customise a whole panel for just £100. When all the tiles have been sold the school then has enough funds to install its own real solar roof, and the income it earns from its Feed-in Tariff payments can be used to invest in other projects to benefit the school.

 “The Solar Schools project is all about using the power of community to tackle climate change,” says 10:10’s Dan Vockins. “By installing solar panels, local schools will be able to spend more money on books and less on rising energy bills.”

Of course, the school gets free electricity when the sun is shining. Schools are particularly suitable communities for solar power because their energy usage is highest during the day – all those computers and white boards -- and during the holidays, the energy they are generating can be exported to the grid to earn more funds.

According to 10:10’s calculations, every £1 invested in a solar roof could generate £3 for the school over the lifetime of the solar panels – a much better investment than cake sales or teddy tombolas.

The scheme will be trialled first in a few schools in Reading, Norfolk, Cambridge and the Scilly Isles, and if it works well 10:10 is planning a national rollout for September 2012. Let’s make sure that happens and get online now and buy a tile and help turn this glorious sunshine into carbon-free energy and cash for school coffers.