Glasgow Academy Sport and Music Centre

The Glasgow Academy, an independent school, is located within the West End of Glasgow. The project will ensure that the Glasgow Academy is the best sporting independent school in Scotland by constructing a new sports and music centre within the campus grounds.

The new sports and music centre will be constructed to deliver a defined low carbon building which places a focus on energy reduction and embodied carbon. As well as a low carbon development, the aspiration is to deliver an educational facility which achieves a high quality internal environmental for pupils and staff which can also be educational from an environmental perspective, teaching the students about how the building performs: it’s energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and the re-use potential of the materials which form the building.

The newly constructed building will adopt an all-electric solution to provide heating and hot water throughout, which would have previously been served from burning fossil fuels. The added benefit from this solution is that as the electrical grid becomes greener at generating electricity then this will further reduce the Academy’s carbon emissions.

A vital aspect of the proposal is the adoption of Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) to deliver low carbon heating and Photovoltaic Panels to generate on-site energy. This solution complies with the objectives of Policy CDP5, the Glasgow City Energy and Carbon Masterplan, and the Scottish Government Heat in Building Standard, all of which encourage the development of low carbon heating and all electric buildings. ASHP and Photovoltaic Panels are both systems recognised as eligible LZCGT under Policy CDP 5 which provide a 33% abatement of the buildings carbon emissions. By applying Air Sourced Heat Pump technology and Photovoltaic Panels, the Glasgow Academy development complies with the Gold Level 1 criteria of Policy CDP 5.