‘The world my children will live in will be very different,” says Zac Goldsmith, father of three, staring into the middle distance. “The way we travel will change and the way we build and communicate. But I think the changes will be good. I’m optimistic for the first time in my life.”

Two years ago the multi-millionaire former editor of the Ecologist magazine considered his mission thus: to wake people up to climate change: “Now, that has been done. There are sceptics but people know about the issues. Before the last election I was asked why the environment was so low down the agenda. You couldn’t say that now, it has completely changed.”

I had never met Goldsmith before but I had read plenty of descriptions of this golden boy of the green movement. He is clever, rich and good-looking (his sister is Jemima, former friend of Diana, Princess of Wales and ex-wife of Imran Khan). I expected the former Etonian also to be languid – he was expelled for possession of dope – but instead I am taken aback by his oomph.

Dressed in a sharp blue suit, he sucks furiously at roll-ups and shoots off ideas so fast that I can barely keep up. We meet in a garden overshadowed by Conservative HQ on Millbank, central London, to talk about the forthcoming Quality of Life review that Goldsmith, Tory parliamentary candidate for Richmond Park, Surrey, has prepared for David Cameron. His co-chairman on the review was John Gummer, the former environment minister. They took advice from a huge range of individuals and groups, from Greenpeace to EDF Energy. “We cast the net wide,” says Goldsmith.

The full report will be published on Thursday, so this is something of a warm-up. Goldsmith, although not yet a professional politician, sticks to his brief with only minor wobbles and what he really wants to talk about is energy. Many geologists believe that global oil supplies are approaching peak volumes. Some say they have peaked already, that we will never produce more oil than we do now. Meanwhile, global demand shoots up and up. Pessimists predict severe and unending economic depression as demand exceeds supply.

“Peak oil informs everything,” says Goldsmith. “People ought to know about that, but they don’t. When it’s going to peak or if it’s happened already I don’t know, but if oil ran out tomorrow we would be stuffed. We depend on it for everything.”

Goldsmith’s review aims to tackle this grim situation by means of several painless measures: “We have not imagined policy ideas that are going to be repugnant to people.”

I nod, reassured. For instance, since much energy generated at power stations is lost before it reaches our homes. Goldsmith and Gummer propose to encourage a system of micro generation by introducing a “feed-in tariff”, rewarding households and businesses that install renewables so they can generate their own power.

“Under the German system anyone generating electricity from solar PV [photovoltaic], wind or hydro is guaranteed a payment of four times the market rate for 20 years. That reduces the time it takes to get the money back and makes it a more attractive investment. Freiberg, in Bavaria, has only 200,000 people but generates more solar power than the whole of Britain.”

The report also has ideas for encouraging energy efficiency: “That is key. It’s easy to raise standards on new homes but that is a tiny part of the puzzle. You can get 33% savings with a little expenditure on a house. You have a variety of ways to do that, but because this is likely to be disruptive the best time to make those changes is when homes change ownership.

“And that can be done by offering an incentive on stamp duty. When you sell your house and you know you will get reduced stamp duty you will make the necessary improvements. It’s a no-brainer.

“We should be incentivising the right decisions. We want to make this stuff obvious without pissing people off. There has never been a greater appetite for green solutions. We have to get it right or people will turn off.”

That is what is happening with biofuels, I suggest. “Biofuels have potential, they can be good, but only secondary biofuels such as unwanted chip fat or corn stalks or vegetable waste. Primary biofuels grown specifically for fuel are terrible. If you covered every acre in the US you would produce 10% of the fuel requirement and the carbon saving would be only 2% or 3%.” And nowhere to grow food.

The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, Goldsmith affirms, but too often people think it’s the other way round: “From the point of view of the environment the market has been disastrous, because carbon does not appear on bottom lines. But if you tax carbon effectively you will change people’s behaviour.”

He tells me with palpable excitement about a huge construction company that has reduced landfill enormously because executives feared they might soon be hit by a huge landfill tax: “We have a big emphasis on the market in our report and the role of the government is to understand the market. Without government intervention we wouldn’t have fixed the hole in the ozone layer.”

He talks a lot about using the market, but how do his recommendations square with John Redwood’s report on economic competitiveness? That called, among other things, for expansion of the roads network.

“I have honestly not had time to read John Redwood’s report. I’ve been so busy with this.” But he accepts there will be arguments: “I hope our ideas will be powerful enough to win. But in terms of reducing the regulatory burden, we’re saying the same thing. We have the highest regulatory burden at the moment and the lowest standards in Europe.”

Goldsmith has put a lot of work into this report and exerted considerable influence, despite being unelected. So why be an MP? And will he bow out if Cameron ignores his recommenda-tions? “I’d be happy if only half of it was accepted. I have done all kinds of campaigning and raised dosh and lobbied and tried to identify the best campaigns. But because the Conservative party were brutalised at the elections [not least by the wrecking tactics, in 1997, of his late father Sir James and his Referendum party] it started them thinking about things from scratch. I am genuinely excited by the opportunity David Cameron has opened up.”

Goldsmith originally put himself forward for East Hampshire, a safe seat, but the night before the selection panel he changed his mind. “I didn’t know East Hampshire. One of the problems with politics is that it’s not local enough. People get parachuted in with no feeling for the place and it’s wrong. I wrote to them telling them I couldn’t do it.”

Richmond Park, where he grew up, was different. He put himself up and was accepted. The great thing about running for parliament, he says, is that he can even effect change as he goes along. He has spoken to about 25 schools and funded a ground-breaking postal ballot of residents to fight a proposed supermarket.

On the subject of a referendum, does he think Gordon Brown will allow one on the European constitu-tion? “There really does need to be one. It’s about honesty. The new constitution is much the same as the old one. It’s unbelievable political dishonesty. It upsets me almost as much as the constitution itself.”

There remains something charmingly innocent about Goldsmith. Some of the greatest dictators of all time used referendums to engineer outcomes they wanted. Won’t Brown, if pushed, do the same?

“No, because a lot of organisations will be involved in setting the question. The job of the opposition is to lobby for things to be done properly.” He pauses. “I do hope you are wrong and Brown won’t fix it.”

What about nuclear power? “I make no secret of my position. If there is a future for nuclear power it has to be without government subsidy. We make clear that you must show you can afford the decommissioning and waste disposal before you start. I’m happy with that.”

Time will tell whether his undoubted enthusiasm will translate into green policies – and whether his political career will be more successful than his father’s.

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