A pound back for every £12 you spend. No, it's not a con. There's no competition, no small print.

Whether you get the £1 depends on you alone all you, me or anyone else have to do is to SWITCH IT OFF AT THE PLUG.

I didn't know this until the Government's Energy Review was published on Tuesday.

It turns out that eight per cent of electricity used in the home is for appliances like televisions and computers simply to be on stand-by.

It's extraordinary how much we are all prepared to pay for our impatience.

After all, waiting for modern appliances to warm up is, these days, just a matter of a few seconds not the minutes it took when radios and televisions were packed with large glass valves the size of light bulbs.

The headline on the Energy Review is all about the future for nuclear energy power generation of electricity.

Rightly so, in my view. There are three reasons for this.

First, our current nuclear power stations are ageing.

If we do nothing, nuclear will account for just six per cent or so of our power needs, and gaps will in turn have to be filled mainly by imported hydrocarbons like coal and gas.

This leads on to my second point energy security.

Even if there were no problems with carbon emission from coal and gas, would we want to become increasingly dependent on other countries' energy supplies, particularly as many of the oil and gas producers are in highly unstable parts of the world?

But third, and in many ways most important, if we want to cut carbon emissions and stop the planet overheating with all the disastrous consequences which will follow, then more of our power must come from nuclear.

What about wind and wave power? Yes they have an increasingly important role to play.

We are forcing the pace on generators by what's called the Renewables Obligation to push the share of power from wind, wave, water etc right up.

But wind power the most obvious form of renewable energy does depend on there being enough wind, and so can be one component only in a balanced energy policy.

And, though this does sound odd, it is also true that, if anything, the "total lifetime releases" of carbon from wind power are higher than for nuclear.

Of course there are understandable concerns about the safety of nuclear power.

But in the UK the nuclear industry has a very impressive safety record, and the independent Sustainable Development Commission has described the UK's civil nuclear power stations as having "an excellent safety record".

But back to the off-switch.

We can all avoid the need for some more power stations, whatever their fuel source by being much more energy conscious.

All sorts of simple decisions from switching off lights and appliances, using energy efficient light bulbs, insulating existing homes and building energy efficiency into the design of new homes can and should make a dramatic difference.

There's only one insurmountable problem I can see ahead to which I have no solution: how to get children to switch off the lights when they go out.