Should you make a cup of tea by boiling your water in a kettle on the gas hob or with an electric kettle? Which, gas or electric, we asked the experts, is the more cost-efficient and lower in carbon emissions?

On the gas hob, say some, because that way you are burning one single source of fuel, and that eliminates all the carbon costs of generated electricity. Through the mains, say others, as electricity can come partly from non-carbon emitting sources (nuclear, renewables), and the electric kettle is likely to be more efficient in boiling the water.

The carbon footprint and energy cost of a cuppa are but small instances of the paucity of information and general lack of knowledge that ensures every household in the land is using too much domestic energy, and therefore paying too much in bills - simply out of ignorance.

Five years ago, when monthly bills averaged less than £50, this was not an issue. Now, with the average monthly bill at £100, domestic energy use has become a serious issue - especially so when, in the teeth of this recession, household bills are unlikely to come down much in the foreseeable future. The latest cuts by British Gas and Southern Electric shaved not much more than 5% off total bills.

It is easy, as MPs on the Commons' Energy and Climate Change Select Committee proved yesterday, to harangue power-company executives for "exorbitant" charges. But these are deregulated, private-sector commercial organisations which, ultimately, can charge what they like. However, there is another weapon: the smart meter installed in the home which can tell you exactly how much gas and power you are using at any given time, and therefore help you manage your consumption.

Yet this state-of-the-art, 21st-century solution is being strangled by an energy industry that is at loggerheads with itself, and is being failed by a lack of direction from ministers and civil servants.

While Ed Miliband's new Department of Energy and Climate Change continues to obfuscate on smart meters, the question arises: why is he considering investing £15 billion in unproven marine power-generating technology in the River Severn when the amount of energy it might produce is not equal to the amount that might actually be saved by a £3 billion investment in a nationwide roll-out of smart meters?

Smart meters have been on the policy agenda so long they were being considered by Margaret Thatcher's ministers. The idea has since been batted round from department to department, but ministers now seem to be persuaded that it is an "easy win" in addressing climate change.

The technology or functionality of a household smart meter showing real-time data to both the consumer and the supplier has already been developed. What is preventing its roll-out is the admission that the companies are fighting among themselves or, as Southern Electric boss Ian Marchant put it when talking to MPs, he and his counterpart at British Gas, Phil Bentley, are "fighting like ferrets in a sack" over its implementation.

Bentley believes individual suppliers should roll it out to their own customers, sparking the sort of competition to be first mover that will hasten installation by all the six major suppliers.

Marchant thinks that's nonsense. He points out: How would a supplier stop a customer defecting to a rival supplier once the smart meter is in? He wants the Government to oversee and regulate the installation of smart meters on a regional basis. That, says Marchant, would ensure one fitter comes on to your street and installs the smart meters, rather than a free-for-all with rival suppliers installing meters on a piecemeal basis.

Dave Robinson, development manager at meter maker Landis+Gyr, cannot hide his frustration. He says the units, at £150 a time to build and instal, are ready to roll: "As an industry we are ready to go. If only we can get the agreement, the first smart meters could be on kitchen walls by 2011."

All agree, smart meters are a win-win-win situation. Smarter consumption means the Government will get its reduction in carbon emissions. And if ministers demand that smart meters are installed by suppliers at no extra cost to the consumer, that amounts to a far more equitable levy on the highly profitable energy companies than any form of arbitrary windfall tax.

At first glance, there may appear to be nothing in it for suppliers to encourage their customers to consume less. Except, the companies freely admit, the advent of smart meters would cut out so many inefficiencies in terms of unneeded administration and infrastructure that reduced revenues would be far outweighed by the reduced industry costs.

Smarter data on consumer habits will also give the supplier improved information on how better to sell other services or products such as microgeneration, wind turbines, solar panels or heat and power recycling boilers.

For the consumer, it means empowerment. Self-controlled energy management should lead to reduced consumption - up to 10% say some, the equivalent at current rates of a cheque for £100 every year.

Smart use of your smart meter might also solve that other great fuel-burning issue of the day: whether to use gas or electricity to boil your kettle.