Global Policy Forum

By Patrick Wintour and Paul Brown

Britain will today implicitly challenge George Bush's anti-environment stance by demanding that the world go further than the stalled Kyoto protocol and commit itself to a 50% cut in carbon emissions by 2050.

Tony Blair, often accused of acting as Washington's poodle, will also mark a decisive shift towards a greener energy policy after months of Whitehall infighting when he announces an ambition to ensure that 20% of British energy is derived from renewable sources by 2020.

In what is not quite the death knell of the nuclear industry, the Department of Trade and Industry will publish its energy white paper today suggesting that new nuclear stations should only be considered as a last resort. The paper has been prompted by the projection that Britain will be a net importer of energy by 2010, for the first time since the industrial revolution.

But Mr Blair will also challenge the US, the biggest energy consumer on earth, to do more to cut consumption. He will challenge claims that cuts in emissions threaten economic growth, pointing out that thanks to new technology Britain has seen emissions fall 5% since 1997 while the economy has grown by 17%.

He will argue that the world's poor suffer most from environmental problems and will urge the world to take up a new covenant to protect the environment. In a clear challenge to Mr Bush, he will argue that the Kyoto protocol - rejected by the US - helped to focus minds but does not go far enough.

Jonathan Porritt, an environmental campaigner and chairman of the government's sustainable development commission, called the white paper a major step forward. It was also backed by Friends of the Earth.

But the Liberal Democrats attacked it in advance as a fudge, and the left of centre thinktank the IPPR said the government's failure to back road congestion charging threatens its commitment to cut carbon emissions.

A Cabinet Office paper last year suggested that the government set a target of 20% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The downgrading of the target to an ambition in the white paper reflects Whitehall nervousness that the 20% figure may not be achievable.

The white paper will promise an annual report setting out progress towards the ambition, including a staging post of 10% of energy from renewable sources by 2010.

In what is being billed as Green Monday, the white paper will be backed by a speech from the prime minister to the sustainable development commission and the first annual sustainability report from Margaret Beckett's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The energy minister, Brian Wilson, a backer of the nuclear industry, supports renewables but is sceptical that the 20% goal can be reached on the basis of the current slow progress. The Treasury has also been asking searching questions.

The 20% ambition will be backed by three main measures - an extra £100m of investment in renewables, taking the total state commitment to £300m; tax breaks and exemptions worth £2bn annually to the renewables industry; and new planning rules designed to make it easier for onshore and offshore wind farms to gain planning permission. Licences for windfarms beyond territorial waters will also be introduced.

The white paper, in line with last year's Cabinet Office review on security of energy supplies, will keep the option of building nuclear power stations, but no new stations will be proposed. It will point out that the problem of handling nuclear waste has not been resolved, making the true cost of nuclear energy difficult to measure.

The trade secretary, Patricia Hewitt, will suggest that such stations should only be built as a last resort if alternative energy sources, including gas, are proving inadequate. The nuclear industry denounced the white paper as "incompetent, irrelevant and frankly dangerous".

Sir Bernard Ingham, secretary of the Supporters of Nuclear Energy group, said: "At a time when greenhouse emissions are rising in Britain, it proposes to continue to allow the nuclear industry, which emits no greenhouse gases, to run down."

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