August 2025

ACS International Schools (ACS), a leading group of schools in London, has a clear commitment to sustainability. Their trusted sustainability partner, Sustainable Advantage, plays a crucial role in managing their annual carbon reporting and waste, energy, and fuel data. However, both ACS and Sustainable Advantage recognised that for the school’s sustainability efforts to truly flourish, they needed a way to move beyond historical reporting and gain real-time, actionable insights.

This changed when Sustainable Advantage, seeing the potential for a deeper, more impactful solution, introduced ACS to ecoDriver. The goal was to go beyond simple reporting and use data to truly empower the entire school community—from staff to students—to drive meaningful change.

The Challenge: Turning Numbers into Action

ACS International Schools’ sustainability leader, Latifa Hassanali, knew that engaging the school’s diverse community was key. However, without a real-time tool, it was difficult to identify specific areas of energy waste. She needed a way to give busy staff and students a clear, purposeful direction for their efforts, rather than just asking them to “be more sustainable.” The risk was that opportunities for significant savings would be missed and momentum would be lost.

The Solution: Data-Driven Empowerment

ecoDriver’s software provided the solution. Latifa and her team worked with ecoDriver to set up the dashboards, adding meters and renaming them to make the data more accessible. This step was critical in transforming raw data into an understandable resource.

With the platform ready, a call went out for sustainability champions across the school’s campuses. Facilities teams, teachers, and administrators came together for a meeting where ecoDriver presented the data, explaining its meaning and how it was collected. The response was immediate and positive.

• Bridging the Gap: Having tangible data created a common language that brought different departments together. For the first time, teachers and facilities managers had a shared tool to work from.
• Empowering Staff: The data gave the sustainability champions a clear focus, saving them from having to find and investigate problems on their own. This was crucial, as these champions often have full-time jobs in addition to their sustainability role.

Measurable and Educational Results

The impact of the new data was felt almost immediately, but in ways that went far beyond just cost savings.

• Real-World Learning: Teachers quickly saw the educational value. The ecoDriver dashboard is now being used in middle school science and maths classes, giving students real-world, tangible numbers to work with. There are plans to embed the data into other subjects, such as social studies and English.
• Encouraging Responsibility: Students are now empowered to take ownership. By looking at the data, a students can now ask staff questions like “Why was this light left on?” The data-backed question makes the conversation constructive rather than confrontational, helping to build a culture of shared responsibility.
• Engaging the Whole Community: The plan is to display live energy data on screens across the campuses and on the school’s intranet, making it a central part of the community’s daily life. This helps plant a “seed of conversation,” sparking curiosity about why certain energy usage patterns are good or bad.

While specific, quantifiable results are still being gathered, the team has already identified that the data is making it easier to engage trustees and other key stakeholders. For a school that sees sustainability as a core part of its educational strategy, having real numbers to prove their efforts is invaluable for continued support and future investment.

“On behalf of ecoDriver, we’re delighted to be working with ACS International Schools. Their forward-thinking approach to education and sustainability is inspiring, and we’re proud to provide the tools that empower their entire community. The valuable feedback from their team is also helping to shape the future of our software, making this a true partnership.” — Matthew Boyham, Sales Manager

About ACS International Schools

ACS International Schools was founded in 1967 and educate over 2,400 students aged 2-18, with day and boarding students from over 70 countries. It’s a dynamic, people-focused charity, inspiring the world’s next global thinkers and doers. 

ACS have three schools in greater London, ACS Cobham, ACS Egham and ACS Hillingdon.

About ecoDriver

ecoDriver is a powerful energy management software solution designed to provide clear insights into energy consumption. We collect granular data from your entire estate and present it in an accessible format, making it easy to understand energy usage patterns and pinpoint areas of waste for removal and cost reduction.

By integrating environmental and local weather data, ecoDriver delivers rich context for data analytics, supporting informed decisions and offering empirical evidence of energy and sustainability performance at all levels, driving progress towards net zero.

Like to know more?  Book time with Matthew Boyham (ecoDriver)