10:10

One of AlertMe's main aims in the coming year is to help our customers reduce their energy consumption (and thus, the amount of money they spend on energy). We'll be doing this by monitoring electricity consumption, providing personalised feedback and advice and by providing smarter ways to control heating (by far the largest energy hog in most British homes).

It seems like a good idea for people to reduce how much energy they consume, and thus to reduce their carbon footprint. But what's a sensible target? One that seems to be gaining some popularity is the 10:10 campaign, which recommends aiming to cut our carbon footprints (individually as consumers and as businesses) by 10% during 2010.

Most of the targets that we hear about for emissions reductions have time-scales in decades, so setting a specific target for next year (and an ambitious one at that) is a great way to change it from an ethereal hard-to-grasp target into something we can all understand and start to work towards.

The campaign has received some amazing support recently, particularly as the entire cabinet signed up, not long after the entire Conservative front bench did the same.

As you might expect, AlertMe has signed up, and I'm now starting the process of figuring out what our carbon footprint is right now, and how we might reduce it next year. More importantly, we need to find ways to help you, our customers, to reduce your carbon footprints. So here's the deal, if you go along to the 10:10 site and sign up to the 10% reduction target we'll do our best to help you achieve it.