Energy Saving Week in the UK took place last week, you may have noticed? I would imagine, however, unless you work in the energy, building or environmental sectors, or are particularly vigilant, it would have passed you by. I for one saw no billboard posters, or adverts in the press (which isn’t to say there weren’t any simply that there can’t have been many because I scan several media daily for eco-stories).

Whatgreemhome.com, of course, featured the initiative, the main thrust of which was to encourage us all to commit to saving 20 per cent of our current energy use. By the Friday of the week-long event, 155,853 people had committed to do their bit. Not many really is it? In fact it’s barely a quarter of one per cent (0.25%) of the population. It hasn’t helped, we suspect, in that the initiative coincided with the half-term break across most of the country. Bad planning or unfortunate? You decide.

All this is not intended to denigrate the Energy Saving Trust, who co-ordinated the week, more a call for more government to step up and provide genuine leadership on climate change. To date, in our opinion, overarching solutions and sound bites have been their response when what is demanded is a co-ordinated, considered and thorough campaign of awareness raising, education and incentives on a local level.

For example, where are the real incentives – in the form of hard cash – to encourage homeowners to switch to renewables energy suppliers? If the government isn’t prepared to give a cash bonus directly it could, at no extra cost to the tax payer, introduce feed-in tariffs for electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of people’s homes sold back to the power companies, for example. In Germany, the same initiative has resulted in 200 times the installed solar energy capacity of the UK.