• This project is developing a renewable energy and recycled water strategy for Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem, Palestine.
• The pupils will be educated about energy and water issues, highlighting the importance in all areas of life.
• Hope Flowers will become an energy and water role model in the community, assisting other local schools to carry out similar projects.

Palestine faces a deficit in electricity and water supply, high costs and lack of energy/water security. This affects schools across the region so there is an urgency for providing alternative supplies. There is a growing interest in renewable energy and recycled water but currently a lack of operational examples proving the benefits make many schools nervous to prioritise this among their competing pressures.

Arup is partnering with Hope Flowers to design and implement a renewable energy and recycled water strategy for the school. The Arup Charitable Donations Committee initially donated £4000 to the school to facilitate the project inception and Arup is now supporting its staff time to continue the work. The intention is that it will not only benefit this school but that they will become water and energy leaders in the community attracting and assisting other schools to carry out similar projects. Hope Flowers has significant experience in piloting new programmes and running training for other schools and teachers in the area, making them an ideal partner.

Arup has extensive experience in designing water systems for various uses and in different contexts. The firm also has wide ranging experience working in the provision of power supplies from locally available renewable energy sources as well as the design of mini-grids. We are drawing on knowledge from this work, utilising Arup’s holistic renewable energy planning and sustainability framework tools to ensure the proposed approach is appropriate, sustainable and reliable.

The core team working on this project, Miriam Ozanne, Maria Brucoli and Geoffrey Morgan visited the school in April 2015. They carried out a needs assessment, held meetings with the school staff and ran workshops for the school pupils. Following a full feasibility report, the school has now chosen the options that the team are developing detailed designs for, assisted by their colleagues in our Dubai office, Jamila El Mir and Ghaith Tibi.

Initial estimates of the cost savings this project could achieve for the school would be enough to provide 20 scholarships to poor students or pay the salaries of two teachers for a year.