The power on our roof, by Maya Nuttall

An original contemporary speech.

Good evening, governors, Mrs Hallam, and everyone who has squeezed into the library tonight. My name is Maya Nuttall, I’m in Year 11, and I’m here on behalf of the Eco Council to ask you for something that, in my opinion, Westbury High cannot afford to delay any longer.

I want to start with a number. Last year, this school spent £186,000 on electricity. That is more than it spent on books, sports equipment and school trips put together. I checked. Twice.

Now I want you to think about our roof. The sports hall roof alone is two thousand square metres of flat, unshaded, completely empty space. Every single day, the sun pours energy onto it, and every single day, we let that energy go to waste, while we pay a company to send us electricity made somewhere else, much of it by burning gas.

Our proposal is simple. Cover that roof with solar panels. The Eco Council has spent six months on this. We have met two installers. We have spoken to the council’s energy officer. We have visited Fernside Academy, ten miles away, which fitted panels three years ago and now produces nearly a third of its own power. Their head teacher told us, and I wrote this down, ‘It is the only decision we’ve made that pays us back every sunny morning.’

I know what some of you are thinking. It’s expensive. And it is. The quote we have is £240,000. But there is a grant scheme open until March that would cover half of that cost. Half. Based on Fernside’s figures, the panels would save us around £35,000 a year. In under four years, the school’s share would be paid back. After that, for twenty years or more, it is free electricity. If someone offered you that deal at a bank, you would bite their hand off.

But this is not only about money. Every person in this room has read the science. You have seen the floods, the wildfires, the record-breaking summers. You have read the headlines about how little time there is to cut emissions. My generation did not cause this, but we are the ones who are going to live through it. And every time we tell younger pupils that small actions matter, they look at this building, with its empty roof, and they ask us a fair question: then why aren’t we doing it?

Imagine instead a school where pupils can open an app in a physics lesson and watch the roof generating power in real time. Imagine a Year 7 learning about renewable energy not from a textbook, but from the building they are sitting in. That is not a fantasy. It is three months of building work.

Delay has a cost too. If we miss the March deadline, the grant disappears. If we wait another year, we pay another £186,000 for electricity, and pump out more carbon to do it. Waiting is not the safe option. Waiting is the expensive option.

So I am asking you, tonight, to vote to apply for that grant. Not next term. Not after another review. Tonight.

We are always told that we are the future. Well, the future is sitting on the roof of the sports hall, waiting for someone to switch it on. Thank you.

Putting solar panels on the Westbury High roof is described as something the school cannot afford to delay. How does the writer try to show this?

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