The head of the Commons Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, Tim Yeo, has published a manifesto in which he urges the Coalition to radically harness the tax system to galvanise Britain's adoption of low carbon technology.

He believes we can restore the country's financial stability while radically reforming energy, transport, taxation, planning and construction policy to step up the pace of Britain's transition to a low carbon economy.

On his list of reforms are:

• Road pricing on motorways, with those who drive gas guzzlers in the rush hour paying most, transferring them to private ownership, to incentivise low emission vehicles and fund high speed rail
• Introducing a personal, tradable carbon credits scheme
• Improving energy security through more renewables, more nuclear and no new coal fired power stations without carbon capture and storage
• Better building standards, rigorously enforced and supported by radical changes to council tax and business rates to reward those who invest in energy efficiency and penalise those who do not
• Work internationally to end the perverse incentives for poorer countries to destroy the rainforests.

Yeo's pamphlet, Green Gold: The Case For Raising Our Game On Climate Change published by the Tory Reform Group, argues that working towards a low carbon economy is not a ‘luxury’ but is essential to our future prosperity.

"Britain faces serious economic challenges but we cannot afford for climate change to fall down the agenda.  If we lead the way in switching to a low carbon economy, we will reap the rewards as going green will be rewarded with gold.  By contrast, if we fail to decarbonise our electricity industry, our transport system and our buildings we will fall behind our competitors abroad and pay a much heavier price financially in the future."

He says we must beware of China who, "behind a smokescreen of recalcitrance in international talks, is moving faster than most Western countries to decarbonise its economy. We risk waking up in ten years time to find that suddenly China is hawkish about the need for tougher limits on global emissions and for faster action to cut them. By then, it might just do so from a position of advantage."

The recession, he says, must not push climate concerns into the long grass.

"Britain faces serious economic challenges but we cannot afford for climate change to fall down the agenda," he writes.

"If we lead the way in switching to a low carbon economy, we will reap the rewards as going green will be rewarded with gold."

Congratulating Yeo on his radical vision, Ian Williamson, President of the European Hydrogen Association, said: “Measures that would both incentivise people to drive low carbon vehicles and raise money could very rapidly accelerate the transition to a low carbon transport infrastructure. Hydrogen powered vehicles will soon be commercially available in the UK, but public investment is needed if we are to create the infrastructure that will make it practical for people to buy them.”