We Must Leave the Fossil Century Behind to Reach the Golden Age of Renewable Energy, Mr Brown

The past two years have been thrilling and frustrating in equal measure. We have begun to glimpse the green holy grail: reliable renewable electricity. Studies by people as diverse as the German government and the Center for Alternative Technology have shown how, by diversifying the sources of green energy, by managing demand and using some cunning methods of storage, renewables could supply 80% or even 100% of our electricity without any loss in the continuity of power supplies.

But while this work has been causing ripples among scientists and green campaigners, the government has appeared stuck in the fossil century. As recently as October last year, the business secretary, John Hutton, was secretly lobbying to abandon Britain's target for renewable power supplies.

I have not yet been allowed to see the consultation paper, but the details obtained by the Guardian suggest that the government has at last begun to take renewables seriously. Some of its proposals appear to be radical, innovative and bold. It shows how its target of producing 35% of electricity from green power by 2020 might be met by greatly boosting wind, biomass and solar energy. The document will propose a synergy between large-scale renewables and electric cars, which can be charged at night when wind power might otherwise be wasted.

Most radically, and controversially, it suggests forcing people to insulate their homes and to fit renewable devices when they build extensions. The paper suggests that oil-fired central heating might eventually be banned.

The brief summary I have seen raises as many questions as it answers.

Is the government really proposing the mass installation of micro-wind turbines? If so, it will be wasting our money. While solar thermal panels (producing hot water), wood pellet boilers and heat pumps offer good value, micro-electricity doesn't.

Why is the government proposing to use biomass for generating power, when it would be much better deployed producing heat? Does it support the German government's proposal to build a European supergrid, using high-voltage direct current lines? I hope so: our renewable resources could then be used as part of a much bolder scheme for balancing supply and demand.

But by far the most important question is this: we now have an idea of what the government will be commissioning, but what will it be decommissioning? Cutting carbon pollution is as much about what you don't do, as what you do.

The paper proposes that the flights we take will keep growing: by 2020, it says, they will account for 11% of the country's energy use. If so, then airport expansion, because of the other greenhouse gases flying produces, will cancel all the savings the government proposes, twice over.

Will the government drop its plans to build new coal-fired power stations? It would be profoundly ironic if it bans oil-fired central heating in people's homes while approving new coal plants tens of thousands of times bigger.

And will it produce a supply-side policy for tackling climate change? At the moment it proposes to maximize the extraction of fossil fuels and minimize their use: these positions are plainly incompatible. Gordon Brown will appear in Jeddah tomorrow to demand that the Saudis raise oil production, just as the consultation paper demands that we reduce consumption. The government cannot pursue both policies and claim to be meeting its commitments on climate change.

Monbiot.com