Why This School, Why Now & Why Such a Big Heat Pump?
Selce’s 7th share offer is live right now – and we still have some way to go to reach our target!
If we are successful, a mega-60kW heat pump will heat the school’s 24:7 hydrotherapy pool. This will in turn largely be powered by the school’s own solar.
Read the share offer document, then complete the form to invest - and help us reach our goal for Charlton Park Academy!
As a reminder, if we make it, Charlton Park Academy stands to save more than £150k over the next 20 years, alongside carbon emissions to the tune of 33 households’ electricity use annually.
Why This School, Why Now & Why Such a Big Heat Pump?
The Royal Borough of Greenwich is ranked in the bottom quartile of all English local authorities for deprivation (Indices of Multiple Deprivation, MHCLG, 2019), with over a fifth of its residents living in areas among the most deprived 20% in England, and only 1.6% in the least deprived 20%.
Even before the recent energy crisis, 17% of Greenwich households were in fuel poverty, against an England average of 13% (Centre for London, 2022).
Pupils with profound and complex disabilities are among those least able to regulate their body temperature. This is a targeted intervention in one of London’s most climate-vulnerable boroughs, at one of its most vulnerable buildings.
Charlton Park Academy is a charity-status special educational needs academy serving pupils with a wide range of complex needs, including profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD), severe and moderate learning difficulties (SLD/MLD), autism (ASD), speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), and physical and sensory impairments (PD/MSI).
54.2% of pupils are eligible for free school meals — more than three times the England average.
Why This Pool Is so Expensive to Heat — and Why a Heat Pump Is the Right Answer
Most school swimming pools sit at around 28°C. Charlton Park’s hydrotherapy pool runs at 33–35°C, close to body temperature, because pupils with profound physical and learning disabilities cannot regulate their own body heat in cooler water.
That 5–7°C gap is small in degrees – but enormous in energy: heating the pool to hydrotherapy temperature uses roughly twice as much gas as a normal school pool.
The pool also runs 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Gas was the only realistic answer when the pool was built; a heat pump powered by the school’s own solar is the right answer now.
The 60kW heat pump will be largely powered by the school’s existing on-site solar PV (around 150 kWp in total — 50 kWp installed by Selce in 2016 and a further 100 kWp installed by the school in 2020).
Any excess capacity will feed the school’s domestic hot water needs, maximising the carbon and bill savings.
It is one of the first community energy-financed heat pumps in the UK, and the first community-owned heat pump project in the Royal Borough of Greenwich.
Why This Matters for the Whole Community Energy Sector
Over the last decade, UK community-energy groups have collectively financed more than 266 MW of community-owned solar — and almost no community-owned heat.
That gap is not an accident: heat is harder to decarbonise than power, harder to monitor, harder to finance, and harder to explain to an investor.
Around 37% of UK greenhouse gas emissions come from heating buildings, and over 85% of UK heat is still delivered by gas boilers.
In Greenwich, gas boilers alone account for about 25% of the borough’s CO₂ emissions, and there are currently fewer than five community-energy projects tackling low-carbon heat anywhere in London — and none in this borough.
Share Offer 7 is one of the first projects designed to close that gap. With the school’s consent, we will publish anonymised consumption meter and performance data from this heat pump as a working case study for other community-energy groups, councils and SEN schools that want to follow.
First done well, then done at scale — that is the sector contribution your investment helps unlock.
If you care about improving your local area, supporting schools and cutting carbon, could your money make it happen?
Individuals and businesses can invest from £250.
Invest in community.
Invest in a cleaner, fairer future for South East London.
Read the share offer document, then complete the form to invest – and help us reach our goal for Charlton Park Academy!