How Blue Marble is Guiding MATs Through Climate Action

The Department for Education set a target for education settings in England to have a Climate Action Plan in place by 2025. With that milestone now in the past, attention increasingly turns to implementation: identifying achievable actions, allocating responsibilities and measuring progress over time.

Yet many multi-academy trusts (MATs) face familiar barriers. Sustainability leads must balance competing priorities, limited internal capacity, gaps in expertise and information held across different sites and systems.

Blue Marble works with schools and academy trusts to address these challenges through its Climate Action Management Platform (CAMP), supported by education-focused advisory services.

Where Schools and Trusts Need Support

Moving from a written strategy to meaningful delivery requires a consistent view of what is happening across an estate. A trust may have many different buildings, energy profiles, travel arrangements, food services and biodiversity opportunities — all with their own constraints.

Blue Marble’s approach brings climate data and planning into a more coordinated structure, helping schools identify priorities while giving trust leaders visibility across the whole organisation.

Four Areas of Climate Action

Climate Action Management Across Multiple Schools

Blue Marble’s Climate Action Management Platform is designed to give multi-academy trusts a common approach to planning, oversight and reporting. Rather than relying on separate spreadsheets or inconsistent school-level processes, trust leaders can bring information together and monitor activity across multiple sites.

The purpose is to reduce duplication, make responsibilities clearer and help school teams see which actions matter most. Combining a digital platform with expert input can also provide support where time or specialist knowledge is limited.

For trusts, the value lies in moving beyond producing reports. It is about using a consistent evidence base to guide action in areas such as energy, waste, food and catering, travel, ICT, biodiversity and teaching.

Turning Strategy into Practical Projects

Energy Efficiency and Estate Planning

Energy and energy-efficiency surveys can help schools understand building performance and identify opportunities to reduce emissions and operating costs. For MATs managing older or varied estates, this can support more informed investment decisions.

Carbon Baselining

Reliable baseline information gives schools a starting point. Carbon footprinting and emissions data can help leaders understand current performance, set priorities and track changes over time.

Waste, Food and Procurement

Everyday operational choices — from waste management and catering to purchasing — can contribute to a trust’s sustainability programme. Bringing these activities into a single plan makes it easier to assess where practical improvements are possible.

Monitoring and Reporting

Structured performance tracking helps schools record what they are doing, demonstrate progress and provide trust-wide oversight. It also helps sustainability leads identify where additional support may be needed.

Education-Focused Advisory Services

Alongside its platform, Blue Marble describes a broad programme of specialist support for education. This includes carbon footprinting and baselining, energy-efficiency surveys, emissions and SECR reporting, adaptation and water-risk assessments, waste reduction, food and catering guidance, ICT sustainability, biodiversity planning, travel strategies, curriculum support, funding advice and sustainable procurement.

These services are intended to help trusts connect strategic sustainability objectives with the operational decisions being taken across schools every day.

Experience in a Multi-Academy Trust

The source feature highlights Plymouth CAST, a trust of 36 schools, as an example of a trust using Blue Marble’s CAMP tool. The trust reported that the platform gave individual schools a consistent structure for developing Climate Action Plans while also providing trust leaders with greater oversight and visibility.

The trust also referred to Blue Marble’s involvement with the Department for Education’s Sustainability Support for Education service when discussing its confidence in the provider’s approach.

Questions for School and Trust Leaders

Before selecting a climate-planning system or external partner, school and trust leaders may want to ask whether they have a clear plan for each site, a reliable picture of emissions and energy use, and a way to track progress consistently across their estate.

It is also worth considering which proposed actions will deliver the greatest environmental and operational benefit, how plans align with the DfE’s sustainability priorities, and where specialist advice may be needed alongside digital tools.

From Plans to Progress

A Climate Action Plan is most useful when it informs real decisions. For schools and MATs, that means building a practical programme with clear data, priorities, accountability and regular review.

Blue Marble positions its CAMP platform and advisory services as a way to bring that work together, helping trusts turn sustainability ambitions into coordinated action across their schools.