Ankara Ortaköy 80th Year Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School is one of the first schools which benefitted from KABEV project renovations provided under Energy Efficiency in Public Buildings (KABEV) project implemented by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change’s General Directorate of Construction Affairs. Levent Hıdır, the vice principal who is in charge of the school coordination of the project, stated that the quality of education and life in the school have increased significantly with the energy efficiency practices carried out in the school. He also draws attention to the fact that some health complaints of students and teachers have also decreased while the quality of education have increased. KABEV project has been implementing with World Bank funding.

How did you decide to benefit from KABEV Project?

In fact, our school is not an old one, however we were still experiencing side effects due to some technical deficiencies and inadequacies and these effects led to a decrease in overall quality of the school in various aspects. After reviewing the announcement made by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, we realized that we met the project criteria and applied to the project as we wanted our school to benefit from energy efficiency measures. At first, we had some difficulties because our school is located in the rural area. As soon as we overcame these difficulties and submitted all the required documents we became eligible to be a project beneficiary.

What are the renovation works applied in your school to achieve energy efficiency?

A wide range of renovation works were carried out in our school that will allow us to achieve energy efficiency and savings. We have benefited from renovation activities such as exterior insulation, replacement and optimization of windows, renewal of our cauldron room’s pumps and solar energy systems, replacement of old type fluorescents used in lighting with LED bulbs and renewal of compensation panels.

What are the benefits of these renovations in terms of quality of education, health and environment?

Windows of our classrooms used to be double-glazed. With the support of KABEV, it was replaced to triple-glazed. Window dimensions were enlarged and insulated windows were installed. To note, our school is located in a north-facing side. We have 32 classrooms but only 8 classrooms can get day light during the day, therefore there wasn’t enough daylight in the school before all windows were replaced. When all fluorescents also changed to LED bulbs, we felt a big change. There is a factor we call “external factors” in education. For example, fluorescence caused a constant humming, noise and twinkling in the lights during the lessons which effected both students and teachers’ concentration. Thanks to these changes, I can say that students and teachers don’t face any external factors to disrupt their educations and learnings.

Was the school temperature sufficient before the renovation?

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Before the KABEV renovations , even if the cauldron was turned on 60 degrees, both students and teachers still sat with coats in their classrooms due to the cold. Moreover, I don’t remember that any of our teachers could sit in a simple jumper without a coat in their classrooms during the winter times. Now, at 40 degrees, we consume not only less fuel, but also our teachers can process lessons in classrooms with their seasonal clothes. When we turn off the cauldron after school time, we can still feel sufficient warmth in the next morning.

Thanks to KABEV, we have started to produce our own electricity with the installation of solar panels in our school. In terms of solar energy, we see that schools of similar quality to ours do not have solar panels pay much higher bills. Their building capacity, number of students and working capital are same as ours, but the electricity bill we pay is around 20.000 TL per month, while the bill they pay is around 90.000 TL. As you can see, such a result contributes significantly to the country’s economy.

In Türkiye, we generally consume electricity through natural gas or fossil fuels. But when we make use of solar energy in this way, we reduce the consumption of fossil fuels which cause the climate crisis. These measures are important to leave a more livable world to our children in the future. On top of this, we are among the rare schools in Ankara that can produce their own electricity.

What kind of feedbacks did you received from students, teachers and parents regarding the renovations?

First of all, everyone agrees that the overall quality of life and education in the school have improved significantly. Reduction of noise came from fluorescence, elimination of cold weather and enhancement of lightening strengthened students’ concentration level on lessons and motivated teachers. In addition, these practices have also led to increase general awareness of energy efficiency. One of our teachers had a vineyard-house-style field and was struggling to bring an electricity to the field. After realizing benefits of solar energy panels in our school, he decided to produce his own electricity by using solar energy panels.

Beside these, we are also very pleased to see those positive results on the health of our students and teachers. Parents are happy with the fact that their children are now less sick. The number of parents who said that “our child is constantly suffering from flu and cold climate in the school building” in the last years have decreased significantly within this year. Many of our students have explained their satisfaction with KABEV project by giving feedbacks such as, “I haven’t been sick since this school warmed up, I was going to the doctor all the time last year, but this year I haven’t.” Besides, the number of teachers who get sick notes in our school has declined in this year.

Do you have any personal memory about the renovation process?

The school’s fiber optic lines needed to be changed. Since I am an electricity specialist, I climbed up to the scaffolding area with a great enthusiasm to take care of this immediately. Nevertheless, I had no technical precautions, neither a helmet on my head nor a safety belt on my waist. The occupational safety and health specialist of the project warned me to stop doing what I was doing and come down right away. I was momentarily upset but that experience was a very positive learning for me. The project expert fulfilled his job to protect my occupational safety and health, so I could see how much the Ministry cares about the occupational safety and health of all workers. In such a complex work, occupational safety and health experts, supervisors and construction site supervisors who do their job properly and effectively have a great role in preventing any possible accidents.

Regular inspections were carried out by the Ministry. The consultant company, which is responsible for the project implementation, technical experts, a team who are responsible for occupational safety and health were at our school throughout implementation of the entire work. The team worked meticulously and everyone was very knowledgeable about their job which we were very impressed with that. I hope more schools can benefit from a project like this. The number of beneficiaries and people who have awareness about energy efficiency are increasing every year as new students come to our school in each year. This means, beneficiaries who are mostly from students gain knowledge and awareness around sustainable energy at an early age which helps project results to be more sustainable.