SFE Overview Poster-1hjqjzk 
I have been a part of a student-led group called Solar for East for almost two years. This project was started by Hemal in Grade 8-9 and I soon joined him with 6 other members: Adi, Brooke, Akshat, David, Devin and Issy. After being rejected by the board of finance to being accepted to success and failures, we finally were able to install our first solar pannels.
This installation event that we had (23rd Feburary, 2019) was the culmination of a two-year-long journey full of hard work and dedication, it was inspiring to see so much support from our very own East community, which made this entire experience all the more gratifying. We wondered to our selves why the community should support solar for east? Everyone here in our community contributing to the carbon emissions our world is emitting at this very moment. Lights, transportation, air condition, our phones and our laptops, basically all of our basic necessities, all need electricity to function. Modern society is literally dependent on our ability to convert energy into its various useful forms. However, the common source of this electricity is causing rising sea levels, droughts and extreme weather changes.
But what many people do not realise is that these changes are not only melting the homes of polar bears, but humans, our own kind, are losing their habitats as well. By 2050 the UN estimates there to be 250 million climate refugees. To put it into perspective, this is nearly the entire population of Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world.
This journey took us back to two years ago, when we were all in middle school with our green shirts on. Mr Thomas, who is the head of the facilities for both Dover and East, gave us a presentation and subsequent tour about our school’s facilities.
We learned about sustainability when we were appalled to hear that Singapore and most other countries heavily relied on the burning of fossil fuels for energy. In fact, we rank as the 26th worst country in terms of emissions per capita. And the thought of normal people like me contributing to carbon emissions by simply switching on the lights at home horrified me .
Quickly, we realised that we needed to change the practices of our own community. Despite our sustainable campus, our school was still responsible for the emission of 2,500,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide annually due to our electricity consumption alone.
With our common passion, we joined forces and took inspiration from Dover’s solar program to launch East’s very own renewable energy project back in May of 2017. We met with the facilities department and worked with the solar energy company helping us today to source the very panels that we will be installing. This process was very new to us, but we were happy to even be in the same room as the adults, and actually, be driving the whole process ourselves. In fact, throughout our work, Mr Thomas often told us that without our efforts, no teacher or parent would be taking on the project to make it a reality.
We worked long nights with this mindset until our proposal to the Board in November of 2017. Despite the fact that we were students, we needed to research every aspect of our system to the fine details in order to get it approved for funding by the school. It was a really nerve-wracking experience given our age, but we were all very passionate about the project, and we had done our homework. Regardless, during the presentation, we were questioned intensely like any other project that may come to the board’s table. In our preparation, we learned about various financial calculations, solar energy and its applicability in Singapore, how to recycle solar panels after 25 years and which inverters to use. To summarise, quite a lot of thinking had to go into it.
With our fingers crossed, we waited until January of 2018, more than a year ago, when we were told that we had been approved and our project had been given the go-ahead. Our proposal to the school involved installing 1130 panels on our school’s roofs, and to support these installations we needed the support of all of you – members of our community who take responsibility for our climate and environment. This period between last January and Today has been incredibly rewarding as we were given the opportunity to do presentations to many students, teachers and parents of our school – Teaching them about solar, and inspiring them to join us in our work.
Being among countries with some of the highest carbon emissions per capita in the world, Singapore has a staggering average of 10.3 metric tons annually per person. This is contributing to the fact that Singapore has been impacted from climate change too. And due to our continual consumption of energy, the problem is getting worse. The average temperature in Singapore has risen from 26.6 degrees to 27.7 degrees in 2014, and there has been an increase in average rainfall in recent years. That is why it is so important that all of you are helping change one of the most pressing issues we are faced with today.
The East campus alone consumes 5,975 mW hours of electricity per year. With our goal of 1,130 panels, we would be able to save 7% of our annual energy expenditure, which is over 173,625 kgs of carbon. The system would be capable of powering 1.4x the entire 15-floor boarding house throughout its lifetime of 25 years, and in total, it will save the emissions of just about 4 Million kg of CO2 where each dollar donated to the initiative can save 6 kilograms of carbon. To put this in perspective, that’s equivalent to about the mass of 53,333 Mr. Thomases.
Every single person here has the potential to make an extremely significant difference, with even a single panel saving 3 and a half tonnes of CO2 from being emitted.And to be able to physically see the amount of people in front of us now who have contributed and are just as passionate as us about this issue is truly a dream come true, when at the age of 14, it seemed like making a difference was so far away.
The ‘tagline’ of our project is ‘lighting up classrooms and imaginations’ which we feel links perfectly with UWC’s mission which is to use education to foster a sustainable future. This is why we value influencing the mindsets of those around us just as much as we value monetary contributions from the school. We believe that the solution to the climate crisis lies between the ears of those around us and this is why we give presentations to anyone in our school that would like to host us. Starting off as middle schoolers with no real knowledge about solar energy, to installing these panels with you today, has taught us that no matter what age you may be, your ideas, with enough effort, can become real solutions to today’s problems. Some of our biggest supporters, such as the Parents association have been instrumental to helping us reach this long-awaited day. Their support in donating 26 entire panels has taken us strides further in achieving our goals.
As well as this, we aimed to get students involved in new activities through the 30 days for 30 dollars challenge. Students took on an activity; swimming, running, or playing the piano, every day for 30 days, and earned a dollar each day for completion of these activities. Altogether, this challenge raised enough money for a panel each for the Grade 4 classes involved, and was a great opportunity for the students to have a direct impact on the donations raised. We have recently established a class donation portal where class parents or teachers can organise for their class to sponsor a solar panel as a class, and if you think your group is up for the challenge, reach out to us!
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Now, after all of this hard work we have raised funds for our first 65 panels and will installed 30 during the event. The rest of these panels will be installed by our generous class donors – the majority from the primary school – to provide them with a powerful educational experience and let the system act as an open classroom for generations to come. For our next installation, we set our sights on funding 100 whole panels and coming back together to expand our system. On the wider scale of things, our project will eventually require funding for 1065 more panels to reach our ultimate goal, but this will take longer than the time that we graduate in – 2 years – and so we are excited to hand on the project to students from junior and middle school in a couple of short years.
The event was a massive success, we had loads of people coming, about 100 when we initially planned for 20. We had interesting presentations during the day, and everyone was always entertained. We had great refreshments and I had interesting conversations with donors and those who participated. Even Mr. Alchin (the head of high school), as well as Graham Silverthorne (head of campus), were there.
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