I’m not a big fan of Tony Blair (well, I don’t suppose many would admit to it anyway), but every now and then over the last decade New Labour have pleasantly surprised me with a piece of legislation which is bang on the nail. For example, like the handing over of the setting of interest rates to the Bank of England – as anyone old enough to remember the debacle of Black Wednesday will agree.

And so we now have the Climate Change Bill, with a legally binding target of a 60% reduction of carbon emissions by 2050. As I was born in 1962, this should comfortably see me out and will be the guiding framework by which my children live their working lives. OK, so the Tories and Lib Dems are complaining that the carbon budgets should be set annually instead of every 5 years, but due to another of New Labours good moves – the Freedom of Information Act – this is hardly of concern as the world and his wife will be monitoring the situation on a daily basis and holding the government to account.

I’m always keen to “do my bit”, and so when Cathy and I decided that the campsite freezer really needed replacing (the lid would only stay shut with the aid of a large brick – hardly the most eco-friendly of machines), I set out to do some serious research.

Walking in to any electrical salesroom and you would think it would be a doddle. Each appliance now has a large EU Energy Label stuck on the side which gives you a rating from A down to G. No problemo – just plump for the most affordable A rated machine. Ah ha – not so fast. It transpires that for freezers (and for freezers only) there is a little known A+ rating.

If that doesn’t make a mockery of the banding system (putting it on a par with the nonsense of A* grades for school exams) there is worse to come. A visit to the excellent Comet web site shows that there are a small secret band of A++ freezers known only to the very few.

Trawling the web, I come across some university research into this bizarre phenomenon which concludes that replacing your freezer with anything less than an A+ is a waste of time and energy – you had just as well go back to sticking the brick onto the old freezer for the amount of good you will do for the planet or you electricity bill.

So here are some of the figures for comparison

A - BEKO ZA90W (£129.99) - £16.11 to run per year

A+ - LIEBHERR GP1356 (£339.99) - £14.93 to run per year

A++  - LIEBHERR GP1456 (£389.99) - £10.66 to run per year

Having only just done these sums for the purposes of this blog, I shall now keep my fingers crossed that Cathy continues to ignore my scribblings as - you’ve guessed it – I bought the Liebherr 1456 (in fact I bought two!). And at this rate it will only take 47 years to see a financial return on my investment.

This all goes to show what a long way we have to go before we can begin to reduced our emissions by such ambitious targets. My only hope now is that electricity prices go through the roof and make my new freezers look like a good buy!