CUTTING electricity usage, saving energy and money as well as lowering your carbon footprint – does this sound too good to be true?

Wiltshire Council has just launched a pilot scheme enabling library users to borrow a home energy monitor from one of eight selected libraries.

Home energy monitors help you to work out where you are wasting energy (and money) around the house. Every single kilowatt of electricity used is monitored, showing exactly how much it would cost per month and its energy usage. You will be amazed how many kilowatts are wasted keeping a DVD player on standby, and how many are used in boiling a full kettle. The monitors really do make you aware of what you are using.

Ariane heads up Wiltshire Council’s climate change team and is responsible for the pilot scheme: “The idea is to gauge demand for the monitors which are completely free to loan. Supporting material on energy-saving measures in the home will be given out with each monitor. We are working in partnership with the Energy Saving Trust, encouraging people to use the home energy check on its website.”

Most importantly, says Ariane, “is a feedback form which we hope people will fill in.”

Prior to being head of climate change for Wiltshire Council, Ariane was a partnerships manager for the former Salisbury District Council. But her background in environmental work and her degree in ecology made her the perfect candidate for her new post. “It is wonderful to be working in an area where you can really make a difference,” she says.

The monitors used in the pilot have been donated by energy provider Scottish and Southern but, if the pilot scheme is successful – as Ariane believes it will be, then she will try and secure further monitors to go in all libraries in the county including mobile libraries.

Energy monitors are available to borrow for the next four months from Salisbury, Trowbridge, Chippenham, Warminster, Devizes, Bradford on Avon and Corsham libraries (there may be a waiting list as demand for the monitors has been high).