Despite their proven potential to cut energy use, lighting controls remain an overlooked strategic tool in campus decarbonisation planning.  In this blog, Helvar explores the benefits that extend beyond carbon reduction. 

Lighting controls are often described as “low-hanging fruit”. Yet they remain underused as a strategic tool for decarbonisation, not because they lack impact, but because their role is frequently underestimated. 

Education institutes such as schools and universities face a difficult balance: meeting ambitious Net Zero targets while managing aging infrastructure, limited budgets, and rising expectations for wellbeing. Estates Directors must deliver measurable carbon reductions without compromising safety, comfort, or educational quality. 

While major intervention like heat decarbonisation and fabric upgrades are essential, they are often complex, disruptive, and slow to scale across diverse estates. 

Lighting controls sit at the heart of campus operations 

Lighting controls touch every building, every space and every user on campus. Yet lighting is often dismissed as a "solved problem" once LEDs are installed, rather than treated as a dynamic, controllable system. This narrow view missesopportunities for deeper energy savings, better space utilisation, and improved comfort. 

For Estates Directors, the real value of lighting controls lies not just in efficiency gains, but in their ability to adapt, to occupancy, daylight, time of day and patterns of use that are constantly changing across an education estate. 

Learning environments are not offices 

Lighting strategies often stall when design approaches developed for commercial offices are applied to schools. Educational spaces face unique pressures: higher occupancy densities, multi-functional usage, and aging infrastructure with inconsistent refurbishments. 

These conditions place sustained pressure on energy use and indoor environmental quality. Research from bodies such as the World Health Organisation and the UK Health Security Agency consistently highlights the impact of poor indoor air quality on concentration, comfort and cognitive performance, issues that are amplified in densely occupied learning spaces. 

Many education buildings were not designed to modern ventilation standards. Temporary or modular buildings are often introduced quickly, with limited environmental optimisation. High occupancy increases CO₂ levels, while varied activities introduce additional pollutants. Against this backdrop, blunt energy-saving measures risk doing more harm than good. Reducing operating hours or light levels without regard to use can undermine comfort and perceived quality, creating new problems rather than solving old ones. 

Human-centred lighting is not a luxury 

Visual comfort directly impacts learning; flicker, glare, and poor distribution cause eye strain and fatigue, undermining concentration. 

Beyond visual comfort, there is growing recognition of the role light plays in supporting natural biological rhythms. Lighting that aligns more closely with the time of day, brighter and cooler in the morning, warmer and calmer later on, can help create environments that feel more supportive and less fatiguing. 

For decision-makers, human-centred lighting isn't about "showcase" aesthetics, it's about risk management. It prevents energy-saving measures from compromising learning outcomes or staff performance. Well-considered strategies protect the user experience while enabling efficiency; poorly planned ones create long-term operational burdens. 

Why data changes the role of lighting controls 

Lighting control becomes strategic when it provides data that supports estate management. This data improves energy monitoring, operational visibility, and compliance reporting, revealing how spaces actually perform. 

Used intelligently, these insights identify high-use areas, energy waste in vacant rooms, and underperforming environments. Lighting thus shifts from a static service to an active decision-making tool. 

A practical approach can be framed in three steps: sense and measure real performance, generate actionable insight over time, and optimise while verifying impact through continuous measurement. This supports incremental progress and better prioritisation of interventions. 

Progress without compromise 

For institutions pursuing Net Zero, optimising existing infrastructure is vital; the most sustainable building is one that doesn't need replacing. Data-led lighting controls align operations with actual demand, cutting waste while supporting flexible use. 

At the University of Bath, a long-term, campus-wide approach to lighting control has evolved into a data-driven platform supporting energy management, space utilisation and operational decision-making across a large and diverse estate, helping progress towards Net Zero without compromising day-to-day campus life. 

For Estates Directors, decarbonisation is no longer a question of intent, but of execution. While not a total solution, treating lighting as adaptive infrastructure, rather than background equipment, simultaneously enablescarbon reduction, better space efficiency, and healthier buildings. 

This blog was written by Helvar. With over 100 years of expertise, Helvar is an international lighting technologies company specialising in intelligent and energy-saving lighting solutions. Helvar’s offering features wired and wireless lighting control solutions, environmental sensing solutions, and a cloud-based digital services platform, forming an end-to-end solution for smart buildings of the future.

Image credit: Helvar