Today marks Earth Day, a day to raise awareness around the world about protecting our precious environment. The theme for 2026 is ‘Our Power, Our Planet’ – designed to help individuals and communities take back power into their own hands and feel autonomy to take climate action in a world that too often feels like bigger systems are against us. At Oasis we believe in the strength of community and building movements together, it’s what we’ve always been about. Collective action at grass roots is powerful, it can even be transformational.

If we take the other definition of ‘power’, as in energy, here at Oasis we have been making some significant collective strides of action around that this year ourselves to support the planet. We have been involved in the Department for Education’s Net Zero Accelerator project for some years now, but this academic year the programme really accelerated, becoming the GB Energy Solar Partnership and expanding to include even more of our academies and students. The grant funding from this programme has helped us achieve:

• 10 solar PV installations, now bringing us to a total of 36 academies in the trust generating their own on-site renewable energy.

 

• These 10 systems will generate 644,490kWh of electricity annually, this is equivalent to powering 25 classrooms for a whole year, or charging all of our students’ ipads every day for nearly 3 years.

 

• In the time it takes you to read this article, we will have generated enough power to charge your laptop every working day of this year!

 

• The academies involved also had a building management system (BMS) control optimisation visit and we are also in the process of having two new BMS’ funded through the programme, which will really help all academies save even more energy through efficiencies to heating/cooling equipment throughout the buildings.

 

• Alongside all of these technology and equipment improvements, there have been extensive behavioural change and education programmes at each academy to ensure they are not only aware of the changes happening to reduce their academy carbon footprint but are an active part and contributor to this through their climate action plan and behaviours.

To further boost this great work, we have also partnered with Solar for Schools to visit the rest of the 36 academies with solar panels in Spring and Summer terms to deliver workshops and assemblies aligning to the curriculum which bring renewable energy and green careers to life. Connecting what is happening on their school buildings to students’ learning using real-life energy data and creativity (think dress up and drones). “Inspiring”, “interactive” and “exciting” are just three words these workshops have been described as in feedback from the sessions so far.

It’s individuals across our Environmental Sustainability, Property and Estates, Operations, Education, Procurement teams, plus the consultants, solar installers, behavioural change educators, data collectors and more that make up this collective positive action. So, a big thank you to everyone involved!

That’s our (solar) power, for our planet. Happy Earth Day!