Heating and cooling on campus: 4 things to factor into your future energy strategy

By Laura Bishop, HI Group

As the new term gets underway and temperatures begin to drop, attention naturally turns to heating college and university buildings. However, after another hot summer, warmer autumn and long-term forecasts predicting the same next year, it’s also important to consider cooling: how can those same buildings also cope with prolonged periods of heat?

The last few months offered a glimpse of the disruption that extreme heat can cause for the education sector, with more than 1,000 UK schools reportedly closing or sending pupils home early. Looking further ahead, the Climate Change Committee have warned that heatwaves could exceed 40°C across all parts of the UK by 2050.

Colleges and universities need to consider what these rapidly changing conditions could mean for their own estates. How can long-term energy plans meet the need for both heating and cooling throughout the year?

Understand your heating and cooling needs

Educational facilities can have complex heating and cooling requirements. Lecture theatres, laboratories, libraries, offices, accommodation and specialised facilities all have distinct functions, often with changing occupancy levels and operating hours.

As a result, demand can vary considerably across a campus. Some spaces may need heating while others require cooling at the same time. Understanding when and where these demands occur is integral to planning the right energy system.

Future estate plans should form part of this assessment too. Will the institution need the same amount of space in five or ten years? Could better space utilisation reduce heating and cooling demand? Factoring these changes into system design can help avoid investing in more capacity than the estate is likely to need.

Consider different approaches to cooling

As temperatures rise, there are a host of measures you can implement to keep your campus comfortable for staff and students. This includes solar shading through trees and external blinds or shutters, as well as increasing green spaces to reduce the urban heat island effect.

When additional cooling is needed, the solution might be might come from an often-overlooked source: heat pumps.

Heat pumps are already an important part of the shift away from fossil-fuel heating, but, despite their name, their role can extend beyond keeping buildings warm. Many systems are reversible, transferring thermal energy out of a building to provide cooling when needed.

For colleges and universities replacing ageing heating systems, this creates an opportunity to consider future cooling requirements at the same time. Some heat-pump configurations can also recover energy removed from spaces being cooled and use it in areas that need heating, which can be particularly useful where both demands occur simultaneously.

The right approach will depend on the building, existing infrastructure and how the campus operates. Air-to-air, air-to-water and ground-source systems each have different applications, so technology choice needs to follow a clear understanding of the site’s requirements.

Plan for increased electricity demand

Greater use of heat pumps and active cooling will add to the electricity requirements of college and university estates. The Climate Change Committee estimates that cooling alone could add 15–30 TWh to annual UK electricity demand by 2050.

This needs to be considered alongside other sources of electrification, including EV charging. Grid capacity, peak loads and opportunities for on-site generation can all influence what is practical at a particular site.

Understanding these factors early can help institutions plan how new heating and cooling loads will fit within their wider energy strategy.

Take an estate-wide approach

MidKent College is a great example of how estate energy planning can evolve as the needs of buildings change. Working with HI Group, the college has already replaced gas heating across multiple buildings with heat pumps, supported by solar PV, battery storage and energy optimisation controls.

The HI Group team has developed a building-performance model to explore the college’s future cooling needs, with simulations set to investigate potential overheating hotspots and peak cooling loads.

For colleges and universities planning estate upgrades, future cooling needs should be considered alongside heating requirements early in the process. This gives estates teams more scope to identify systems that can meet both effectively.

Image credit: HI Group 

About the author 

Laura Bishop is co-founder and director of HI Group, an EAUC company member specialising in connecting nature, technology and finance to achieve carbon reduction and net zero action plans for a sustainable future. 

A chartered mechanical engineer, Laura has 15 years’ experience designing and developing low-carbon heating systems. She is chair of the Heat Pump Association UK (HPA UK) and the UK CIBSE Domestic Building Services Panel.

Hi Group is also a sponsor of the UK and Ireland Green Gown Awards Reporting with Influence category. Explore the group's 5-step guide to decarbonising public-sector estates and find out how the team can support heating and cooling requirements across your estate.