Details on how the UK can meet its climate change targets have been released by the government today.

Britain is currently committed to achieving a 34 per cent reduction in 1990's carbon emission levels by 2020 and the country is currently over halfway towards meeting this target.

The government wants to ensure the UK is ultimately successful by pledging to have 40 per cent of our electricity generated from low carbon sources, such as renewables and clean coal, by this time.

This means that many of us could be living in green homes well before 2020, although the government has conceded that this policy will require huge investment.

As a result, the cost could be passed on to households in higher utility bills, but if that results in people embracing ideas such as energy saving, some may see that as a good thing.

Climate change secretary Ed Miliband commented: "Our plan seeks to be fair to the most vulnerable, it seizes industrial opportunity and it rises to the moral challenge of climate change."

Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth, told Sky News today that the public is "understandably concerned" about the prospect of higher energy bills.

However, he said lots of people have not yet understood how serious climate change is and how quickly action needs to be taken.