Scoil Niocláis, Primary School, Frankfield, Cork

 

The staff of Scoil Niocláis, with over 800 boys and girls under their care, are keen to ensure they all develop good lifetime habits.  The Green Schools initiative, under the careful guidance of Sinead Downing, helps them all to cultivate a healthy respect for the environment in a fun and educational manner.  The school’s motto is ‘Doras Feasa Fiafraí’ (The Road to Learning is Questioning).  All the members of the school community are determined to add actions to these questions.  The latest positive action for the environment that Scoil Niocláis has pioneered is the reduction of wasted electricity used by idle computers.

As well as saving on CO2 emissions and reducing the electricity bills they are also taking the Green Schools to the next level - energy savings.

The school has joined the Green Button Campaign and as a direct result will save over €2,450 per year on energy bills.  They also combat global warming by reducing CO2 emissions by over 30,000 kgs annually.

Green Schools co-ordintor Sinead Downing and IT co-ordinator Marge O’Brien, deserve a big ‘bualadh bos’ for their pioneering work.

According to Marge O’Brien, ‘At Scoil Niocláis we care greatly about environmental issues & climate change.  Being part of An Taisce’s Green School programme, the Green Button Campaign was the next logical step for us.  It directly benefits our school budget by being able to use the savings for more productive needs.  This is a no brainer for any school wanting to push their Green credentials and save much needed cash‘.

Rathpeacon National School, Cork

Located just outside Cork City, the school joined the Green Button Campaign in Feb 2011 and are now guaranteed to save approximately €800 in energy costs annually.  The Green Button Campaign was delivered to Rathpeacon National School through the installation of our software on the schools PC’s.

The software agents, directed by the Energy Watch IT Schools server provide Rathpeacon National School with a power saving schedule to automatically power down the school’s PC’s at 3pm every day.

The Green Button agents were installed on 14 PC’s, and within a few weeks Rathpeacon National School have saved over €100 for those 14 PC’s alone. In addition to the scheduled power downs a Green Button key was enabled on each of the 14 PC’s so that the students themselves can make energy savings by simply pressing the Green Button as they finish working with the PC.  The software also ensures that students in Rathpeacon National School don’t lose their work before the computers are powered down by automatically saving any open work files.

From the very first week of installation schools can save over €1 for every PC every week!

An Mhainistir Thuaidh – North Monastery CBS, Cork

 

Donal O’Buachalla, the principal of the ‘Mon’ has his eyes on saving costs and maximizing energy usage for this historic school (founded in 1811). He has been pro-active in energy savings and has embraced the Green Button Campaign.

Recently installed on 60 PC’s the software will save over €2,100 p.a. That’s money that Donal can put to good use elsewhere.