What is it with this government and competitions? The latest one is its declared way to tackle the energy efficiency of our existing homes. Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced, on 2 April, the government is launching plans for 100 ‘green neighbourhoods’. Areas will compete for the status, with the winners committing themselves to reducing carbon emissions by 60 per cent which is exactly the figure the government itself has pledged to cut carbon dioxide emissions by, against the 1990 level, by 2050.
Only last year the government decided a competition was the preferred route to encourage interest from companies to initiate carbon capture and storage. Only a handful entered and by now most have dropped out of the competition. We are not anti-competition, far from it, but it simply strikes us as an infantile way to engage individuals and communities to take responsibility for their own actions. Call us old-fashioned but whatever happened to doing something because it’s the right thing to do and not because we’ll be rewarded for doing it?
