GenZero net zero schools

GenZero is a set of standardised, net zero school designs commissioned by the DfE and integrated by Mott MacDonald with a wide partner team. It uses Platform Design for Manufacture and Assembly (P-DfMA): up to about 85 per cent of each building is prefabricated offsite, with timber as the primary structural material and modular units (plant rooms, staircases, sanitary pods) assembled on site. A kit of standard parts can produce many school types, from primary through sixth form and special schools.

St Mary's Catholic Voluntary Academy in Derby is widely cited as the first school built to the GenZero net zero carbon specification. Wellfield Academy and Woodside Primary School are among the pilot projects delivered for the DfE. A full-scale timber classroom prototype was first shown publicly around COP26.

GenZero targets net zero carbon in operation and low embodied carbon, using timber structure to offset embodied emissions, passive ventilation and natural cooling for climate resilience, and alignment with the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge and LETI energy targets. It sits alongside the DfE's newer Output Specification (Generational schools programme) as the design ambition for new schools.

GenZero is not a PSDS retrofit case and does not give a retrofit cost. Its value to an estates team is as a target: it shows the fabric performance, embodied-carbon discipline and offsite methods a 2030-ready new school achieves, which a deep fabric-plus-heat-pump retrofit is trying to approach in an existing building.