Eficiencia energética en escuelas españolas como indicador de competencia de gestión económica: Diferencias entre centros públicos y privados

The main objective of this article is to provide empirical evidence on the energy efficiency measures currently being implemented by primary and secondary schools in Spain,  to attempt to identify the characteristics that could explain the different levels of adoption and to propose public policies aimed at the promotion of energy savings. Using the information provided by the Observatorio del Centro Educativo Espanol (2011), which delivers data for 1 969 public, private and charter Spanish schools, it has been found that the adoption of energy efficiency measures in schools is positively correlated with other indicators representative of the economic management competence of the school, and that levels of adoption of energy efficiency measures are much higher in private institutions. This conclusion of this first study holds after controlling for the influence of other variables related to the adoption of such measures, including the size of the centre, the year in which the last reform was  carried out, the geographical area and the average temperature.