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Schools climate action guide and template

How to complete your climate action plan template

The climate action plan template (docx, 2.2mb) has five columns to fill in. These are Goal, Action, Steps, Timeline and Resources.

Goal

This is the area of climate action that you will be addressing through the plan. It could include:

  • establishing your baseline
  • decarbonising
  • biodiversity
  • climate education and green careers
  • resilience and adaptation
  • active and sustainable travel
  • air quality
  • waste
  • consumption and recycling
  • food
  • any other relevant areas that you would like to include

More information on these areas is provided in the following sections of this guide.

Actions

These are the activities that you will undertake within each goal. Make sure the action has a clear objective that can be achieved so that the goal can be met. For example, a decarbonisation action could be:

  • reduce carbon emissions in our buildings by changing the light bulbs to LED bulbs in each school building

Steps and tasks

These are the smaller steps or tasks that you will need to take to complete the action. How will you compete the action? What are the key steps will you need to take?

Timeline

Decide when you want to achieve the action. For example it could be by the end of year, in a certain term or in two years. Identify how long this action will take from start to finish and indicate when you will be carrying it out. Try to be specific with dates.

Resources

Include in this section anything that you might need to meet the action. For example:

  • who will be the lead?
  • staff time required
  • funding needed
  • expertise needed

What will you need to carry this out? What expertise will you need to bring in? For example, the resources required for the action to change the light bulbs to LED bulbs would include the staff involved in the project and its cost.

Additional columns

You will also see three additional columns in the table titled co-benefits, tools/resources/information and funding opportunities. These can be used to record:

  • any extra benefits that result from this goal
  • links to helpful tools, resources and information that will help you
  • links to relevant funding opportunities for this goal

These three columns have been highlighted in green and are solely for your school's benefit. They will help you to complete the action and do not need to be included in your climate action plan.