Student Energy Action for Life addresses the critical challenges faced by students as they navigate the complexities of the home energy system.

This is a UK-wide project that will run for 5 years (2025-2030), and will bring together students, students’ unions, universities, housing providers and policymakers to transform the student housing landscape by promoting energy efficiency, and equipping students, students’ unions and landlords with the knowledge and skills that they need to drive meaningful change in the private-rented sector.

The project recognises the unique challenges that some students can face in the transition from their family homes, or from university-owned or purpose-build student accommodation, to the private-rented sector. For many students, the UK energy system will be completely new, and often student tenants are left without the support and guidance they need to make informed decisions about home energy efficiency. This can leave them vulnerable to higher energy costs and environmentally harmful housing options and energy behaviours.

SOS-UK will be partnering with National Energy Action on the project, who are the UK’s leading fuel poverty charity. Their in-depth sector knowledge and outstanding packages of training will be used to upskill students, staff and landlords for this project.

Thanks to National Lottery players, Student Energy Action for Life has received £1,250,503.17 over five years from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK. This comes from the Climate Action Fund, a £100 million commitment over 10 years from The National Lottery Community Fund to support communities across the UK to take action on climate change and involve more people in climate action. This forms part of one of the funder’s four key missions in its 2030 strategy, ‘It starts with community’ - supporting communities to be environmentally sustainable.

Research previously conducted by SOS-UK shows that 54% of students have experienced damp or mould on walls or ceilings, and 59% have felt uncomfortably cold in their homes. This has had a profound impact on student wellbeing, with 48% of respondents telling us that their housing conditions are leaving them feeling anxious or depressed. Through the Student Energy Action for Life project, students will receive tailored, peer-to-peer advice and resources that will enable them to navigate the energy system effectively, and to help them to make sustainable choices that align with their values and financial needs.

We will be training up Student Home Energy Auditors, who will be equipped with the knowledge to audit both their own student home, and those of other students in their local area. This will help students to identify areas where they could be losing energy unnecessarily, to boost energy efficiency in student homes with key advice from their peers, and to ultimately help them to make valuable savings on their bills.

One of the priorities for Students’ Unions over recent years has been to tackle poor quality and expensive housing in their towns and cities. As part of this campaign, we want to help students to develop these campaigns further, by considering the impact that improved energy efficiency in student homes will have on not just the quality of housing, but on student mental health and wellbeing too.

We will be running training sessions for Students’ Union Officers and Staff, that will also be open to University support and sustainability staff members too, which will go into more detail on what fuel poverty and energy inefficiency is, and what this can look like in the student housing landscape. We will also be discussing ways to campaign for better energy efficiency in student homes, and how to integrate this into existing housing campaigns. Following this training, the project team will also be providing SU Officers with campaigning resources and materials on how to lobby both landlords and local authorities on this issue and be on hand to 1-to-1 campaign support too.

In addition to supporting students, this project will work to improve access to energy-efficient properties in the student housing market. We will be engaging landlords across the UK, and providing them with education, training, advice and assistance to encourage investment in energy-efficient upgrades to their properties, for the longer-term benefit to both the landlord and the home owner, and to their student tenants.

Whilst landlord engagement will be national, SOS-UK will be partnering with Manchester Student Homes, Aston Student Homes and Swansea University ResLife team on this strand of the project to develop more focused relationships, engagement and training with their landlords, and to monitor energy efficiency progress and improvements across the 5-year span of the project.

Students who are interested in becoming Home Energy Auditors can sign up to our mailing list, which will include information on future training dates.

If you are from a Students’ Union or University and are interested in energy efficiency/campaigns training, please complete this expression of interest form to be notified of future training dates.

If you have any further questions about the Student Energy Action for Life project, please email hannah.nimmo@sos-uk.org

‍