PIPER TERRETT keeps chickens, grows her own vegetables and has installed low-energy light bulbs in “most” of the rooms in her house. The 33-year-old from Billericay, Essex, is a greener-than-average consumer — and is now meant to become a national champion on environmental issues.

The Energy Saving Trust, a government-funded group, has chosen Terrett from a field of 100 candidates to be its first “green voice”. The voluntary post runs for a year. Her brief is to represent public opinion on green issues, and to challenge government policy.

Terrett, a former deputy news editor on the Investors Chronicle, will listen to what the public has to say at a series of road shows and events that are being set up by the quango. She will then put the public’s concerns to ministers and opposition spokesmen at arranged sessions.

Terrett already runs a blog — frugal-life.spaces.live.com — that receives several thousand hits a month.

She also sees challenging businesses to go green as part of her job, but recognises this is difficult in a recession. “Several businesses around me have gone under and it’s tough to ask others to spend more on energy reduction. But we need to find out what’s preventing companies as well as the public from really engaging with the issues and acting on them.”

Terrett tries to live a sustainable life in her 1960s former council house. It has been fitted with low-energy light bulbs “in most rooms”, and cavity wall and loft insulation has been installed. Terrett and her fiancé had double glazing put in when they moved in five years ago.

Terrett confessed she doesn’t know how much of an energy saving the insulation and double glazing have made, but said “it feels warmer”. She admitted they could be doing more. “We have looked into solar thermal and having a condensing boiler installed, but the cost of £3,000 to £5,000 for a boiler puts it out of reach for us.”

Despite government grants through the Low Carbon Buildings Programme of up to £2,500 for the installation of microgeneration technologies, cost is likely to dissuade most people from adopting them. There could be some help on this front next April, with the introduction of feed-in tariffs that will set the price that must be paid for electricity generated by renewable-energy technologies of up to 5MW.

Terrett sees herself as battling against what she calls “the British apathy. Some people don’t think it [acting on climate change] is their responsibility, that government will solve it”. But she added: “I aim to try to make a start in solving those problems, whether by posing questions to the government, getting people inspired to go green or kick-starting some schemes around the UK.”

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