Talk about toxic. Nuclear power brings out the petulant in everybody. The industry fudges its figures. The green lobby stokes up safety fears. Liberal Democrats bleat that renewables should fill the energy gap, but oppose wind turbines in their own constituencies. Tories prevaricate and Gordon Brown, whose new year resolution is apparently to take “tough decisions” as long as they involve almost nothing of substance, will declare today that the British door is open to nuclear energy. In fact, the door has always been open. The only reason it was ever perceived to be closed was government's inability to guarantee a return to investors. But here the PM is indeed resolute: there will be no subsidy.

I am genuinely confounded by my country's failure to have a grown-up energy policy. I have never been ideological about nuclear. I don't think we can halt the global spread of warheads with sit-ins at Sizewell. I believe experts who say that secondary containment systems make a Chernobyl-type meltdown impossible. I do worry about nuclear waste. But I also care about climate change and energy security, which ministers say will worsen if we do not renew our nuclear capacity. If nuclear is part of the answer, I think we should get on with it.

Britain's clapped-out reactors are still our largest source of low-carbon energy. The electricity they produce creates about 15 tonnes of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour (after accounting for the carbon costs of reactors), compared with about 350 from gas and 900 from coal. If we don't replace our reactors, we will have to find some other way to supply a fifth of our electricity.

Greens complain that reactors will take too long to build, but they deliberately spin out the planning process. They fear that a nuclear push would divert investment from renewables and decentralised energy systems, both of which I agree are vital. But nuclear v renewables is a false choice.

Here's an idea. Why not outsource the problem? The French seem more sanguine about safety, less prissy about planning, have great engineers and more land to spare. We already import 2GW a year of nuclear electricity from France through an undersea cable. Why not more? This would kill concerns about planning law and about the waste, which would become someone else's problem. Unethical? Maybe, but so is prevaricating in the face of climate change. France has already decided to rebuild 19 of its 56 reactors (cue Gallic shrug). Why not cut a deal?

If this proposal infuriates both sides, that is my intention. The scale of the challenge surely merits a bit of lateral thinking. Too many people enjoy being entrenched in their outrage. The real question should be how we can best reduce carbon emissions by more than 60 per cent, some now say 80 per cent, in the next 20 years.

Here, ministers are clear. We need a package, they say. Renewable power is too intermittent to provide a total solution: you need energy efficiency and nuclear too. They are right, though still woefully short on detail. Germany has almost finished making its entire housing stock more energy efficient: English Heritage has a tantrum if anyone suggests double-glazing a window. Germany gets 13 per cent of its energy from renewables. Britain struggles to achieve 5 per cent. And the whole hoo-ha about renewables and nuclear has left the most important question unanswered: what to do about coal.

If Britain's nuclear reactors shut down tomorrow, the replacement would not be tidal or solar panels. (Our first marine turbine, I'm told, is languishing in its packaging on a Scottish dockside, because of a lack of heavy-lifting equipment.) No. It would be coal. The hard, crumbly, black stuff. The world is set to use a great deal of coal in the next 20 years, according to the International Energy Agency: about half of it in China and India, the rest principally in Europe and America. It's cheap, it's plentiful and there is no way to persuade these countries not to burn it. If we don't find a way to remove the carbon dioxide emissions from coal, experts seem to agree, there is no way that we can hope to combat climate change.

Luckily there is an answer. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) extracts carbon emissions from coal and pumps them underground, returning them to the geological fissures from which they came. The gas dissolves in water to form harmless carbonate. Neat? Yes. Proven? Not quite. There are few models, because CCS roughly doubles the cost of a new power plant. But if the West doesn't take a lead, there is scant chance of convincing Asia to follow.

The really “tough decision” facing the Government is not on nuclear. It is about how much to spend on CCS. Last week Kent councillors gave the go-ahead for a coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, Britain's first in 24 years. Green groups rightly fear that this could be the first of a series, which could bury all hope of meeting CO2 targets. Government should obviously fund a CCS demonstration project at Kingsnorth. But the energy minister hasn't even bid for a budget.

At the end of this century, historians will wonder why we did not use all the technologies available to us. Our debates about nuclear will come to look petty in the extreme. And coal is the vast, dark shadow that hangs over us all. The Government has today taken a step in the right direction, by standing up for nuclear. If it intends to give guarantees over pricing, it may actually generate some action. But the really tough decisions that Mr Brown must take are on coal. The green lobby should be pressing him on that, not losing credibility with its futile fight against fission.

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