Innovative Finance Project
Aims to accelerate the transition to zero-carbon school environments.
Upgrading crumbling classrooms is vital to creating zero carbon schools. But schools struggle to access the finance for these much-needed projects. This leaves their carbon emissions stubbornly high, and puts students’ learning and health at risk.
Through an exciting partnership with the Green Finance Institute (GFI), Let’s Go Zero will lead, inspire and bring together stakeholders to develop innovative finance solutions for school decarbonisation and retrofit.
In May 2025 Green Finance Institute (GFI), in partnership with Let’s Go Zero, launched a report outlining the barriers and potential solutions that could significantly reduce the £16.3 billion investment gap to decarbonise the UK’s 32,149 schools.
The need for private investment
Financing education buildings is a highly complex environment – even without the added challenge of a £2 billion per year funding gap to decarbonise them.
Private finance could play a significant role in filling this £2 billion per year finance gap, if done in an appropriate way. Altering the landscape to enable private investment could be pivotal, but can’t be at the expense of investing in education or paying teaching and maintenance staff appropriately to ensure that student education remains the priority.
The GFI and Ashden have developed a series of initial recommendations to assist schools on their decarbonisation journey. These include:
These could enable schools to move forward quickly and with confidence on simple, low risk, high impact decarbonisation measures such as building management controls, LED lighting, and rooftop solar PV. Energy savings from these measures could be reinvested alongside building confidence and trust in the supply chain.
If you are interested in unlocking new retrofit funding for schools, please email letsgozero@ashden.org.
Please note this project will not be giving grants or funding directly to schools.
