Later on today David Cameron will announce plans to help six million households improve energy efficiency, if the Conservatives are victorious at the next election.

As heads of state begin to arrive at the Copenhagen summit to begin the final stage of negotiating an agreement, Cameron said the £20 billion fund would tackle more than 30% of UK carbon emissions.

Under Conservative plans companies such as Tesco and Marks & Spencer would lag lofts and insulate walls, then share the resulting savings in electricity bills with householders over a minimum 15-20 years.

A household where a partner organisation provided an initial investment of £1,500 for a basic package of measures could expect to see savings of £360 a year on its heating bills.

Households saving that much would need to pay £120 back towards the initial outlay, but would keep the remaining £240 a year for themselves.

Outlining his plans during an interview with the Guardian Cameron said: “I want to launch this from day one of a Conservative government, with councils actually going house to house, street to street, to identify the areas, the homes and the people that would most benefit and would get on with doing most quickly.”

The 14 councils who will pilot the scheme should the Conservatives form the next government are; Broadland, East Sussex, Hammersmith and Fulham, Hyndburn, Kensington and Chelsea, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Norfolk, North Tyneside, South Holland, Suffolk, Westminster and West Sussex.

Cameron said the idea for a “localist green revolution” was an answer to his fear that the “top down” climate change agenda was “in danger of starting to lose people”.

“If the environmental agenda becomes limited to well-suited politicians stepping out of aeroplanes onto tarmacs, telling people how to live their lives and sounding like everyone else will just have to sit in a darkened room, wearing woollies with the lights turned off and the heating down, we are not going to get anywhere,” he added.

“People do not like being lectured. You have to take people with you, and the way to do that is to connect individual behaviour and rewards, and help people see the advantages of going green. We have to have carrots as well as sticks.”

Asian delegations at the Copenhagen climate change talks are insisting that a political agreement must be reached to pave the way for a legally binding treaty in the near future.

Speaking to the InterPress News Service Akira Yamada, deputy director-general at Japan’s ministry of foreign affairs said, “Though we realise that it is highly unlikely to arrive at a consensus here in Copenhagen for a legally binding treaty, we are quite hopeful of a political accord,” He added that the negotiations would lay the foundation for a legally binding treaty.

Akira stressed that Japan wants a treaty that should be signed by both the United States and China, “the largest emitters of greenhouse gases,” he said.

As talk progress it is becoming more and more evident that countries from the Asia-Pacific region will only settle for a political accord, and not the legally binding treaty being pushed for by Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband.

But pressure groups are insisting that a legally enforceable agreement should be the outcome of negotiations on climate change as “mere political promises would not do.”

“A politically binding treaty amounts to a love affair while the legally binding treaty is a proper wedlock. This is the simplest expression one can use to tell the difference between the two,” said Mike Shanahan, senior press officer at the International Institute of Environment and Development.

“No government at any time in any country can deviate from the legally binding treaty while promises through political statements are no guarantee,” he added.

A Danish draft agreement, which was leaked to the Guardian early this week, was rejected out of hand by developing countries, who said it tilted the balance of mitigation obligations away from the developed nations, deemed a violation of the spirit and substance of the United Nations Framework Convention and the Bali Action Plan.

Following the publication of the draft text Lumumba D-Aping, who chairs the G77/China negotiations block which comprises more than 130 countries, said “The Danish text is an extremely dangerous text for developing countries. It robs them of an equitable and fair share of the atmospheric space.”

“We know that Denmark’s prime minister is desperate for a deal in Copenhagen, but it should be a balanced deal,” he said. “We hope that common sense and wisdom will prevail.”

Countries like China and India had very similar reactions. The backlash ultimately prompted the Danish government to say that document was mealy a “discussion paper, not a draft.”

Indonesian delegate Angus Purnomo said his country has begun enforcing certain climate mitigation measures like reducing emissions. “But we need financial and technological assistance from developed countries. And this is the forum where we should get us a guarantee of every kind of assistance in black and white.”

“We have come here to engage very constructively in the multilateral negotiations under the United Nations system, and we are confident that there will be good outcomes, which must be consistent with the convention principles,” Vijay Sharma, a delegate from India, told InterPress.

Jim Pickard, the Financial Times Westminster correspondents, is reporting that Gordon Brown had changed his schedule so that he can attend the Copenhagen climate talks early. The Prime Minister was originally expected to leave to attend the UN talks on Thursday and Friday next week.

According to Jim this to so that the PM can get stuck into behind-the-scenes negotiations with some of the more “recalcitrant” countries in the hope that he can get them to sign up to a final deal.

Earlier Friday the chair of the UN talks asked rich countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Top United Nations climate negotiator Yvo de Boer called the draft “a framework to address the big-ticket items.” The draft proposed a legal agreement, rather than the legally-binding treaty some African and developing nations want to come out of the talks.

In Brussels today Mr Brown pledged £1.5 billion over three year’s to a European fund aimed at cushioning poor countries from the effects of climate change. But Mr Brown has come in for criticism after it emerged that the UK was putting in the largest national share. France and Germany pitched in with about £1.2 billion each over three years.

Asked why the British contribution was the biggest, Mr Brown said: “I think we have done the right thing. This offer is one of the ways we can get a global agreement at Copenhagen.”

He said that because of its Commonwealth background, Britain was historically committed to helping poor nations, particularly in Africa – and he predicted that Germany and France would also increase their contributions to the so-called “fast start” fund to help the developing nations meet their share of the financial burden of a global deal.

Commenting on the size of the UKs contribution, which amounts to 27% of the total climate change fund, the Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Greg Clark, said: “It is important to have agreed that adaptation funding is necessary, but it is vital that participants at Copenhagen now agree on an international financial mechanism that can dependably result in the necessary flow of funds.”

The Prime Minister also confirmed that EU leaders meeting in Brussels have agreed they will offer a 30% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, if other countries are willing to commit themselves to ambitious reductions in Copenhagen.

While European leaders said the new fund showed a willingness to help the poorest countries tackle the effects of climate change, developing countries and aid agencies have derided the size of the fund.

Speaking to the BBC Bruno Tseliso Sekoli, chairman of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) bloc, said that the EU pledge “cannot be enough for the purpose of meeting the requirements of the LDCs”.

“Any money that would flow from the developed to developing worlds would be welcome but these numbers are very, very low,” he said.

Oxfam EU climate change adviser Tim Gore was also disappointed at what he sees as a woefully inadequate pledge .

“In Brussels today, EU leaders only offered small sums of short-term cash. Worst of all, this money is not even new – it’s made up of a recycling of past promises, and payments that have already been made,” he added.

A draft text released Friday by the chair of the Copenhagen international climate conference asks rich countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

That would require a serious increase in the United States’ proposed reduction. The U.S. has proposed a 17 percent cut below 2005 levels, which amounts to about a 4 percent cut below 1990 levels.

Top United Nations climate negotiator Yvo de Boer called the draft “a framework to address the big-ticket items.” The draft proposed a legal agreement, rather than the legally-binding treaty some African and developing nations want to come out of the talks.

The document also leaves open the exact target for limiting temperature increases. Small island states, which are suffering from rising sea levels, have called to keep temperature rise below 2.7 degrees. This is well below the 3.6 degree figure endorsed by the U.S. and other richer nations.

The draft also do not specify the amount of money that rich nations will pay poor countries to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change – one of the most contentious issues at the climate conference. The U.S. has said it would pay its “fair share” of a $10 billion fund.

But developing nations and U.N. officials feel a larger, longer-term commitment will be necessary.

“We know that you are going to need over time in the order of $200 billion for mitigation and perhaps as much as $100 for adaptation,” said de Boer on Friday.

In a new report the Taxpayers Alliance has estimates that the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen will cost £130 million – or more than £8,500 per delegate.

The U.N. says the Danish government has allocated £37.7 million to the conference and conference-related activities, but it warns that that number may go up. To that, TPA makes an educated guesses about the average costs to participating countries for items such as air travel, hotels, food, office space and the like.

Among the assumptions: airfare for non-European delegates at £755 per person, hotel rooms in Copenhagen at £121 a night, and food at £20 per day.

Swamping those relatively conservative estimates – by mid-November, it was tough to find rooms in Copenhagen for under £243 per day – is the Taxpayer Alliance’s £54.7 million estimate for salaries for delegates. It’s the biggest number in the calculation, and the group acknowledges that it’s open to debate since many of the delegates would be on their countries’ payrolls even if they weren’t in Copenhagen at the moment.

“The need for those staff to attend the conference still represents a cost though, as they could otherwise be doing other work,” the Taxpayers Alliance says in its report. “If there isn’t other work for them to do, total staffing could be reduced which would cut costs.”

Matthew Sinclair, Research Director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “The politicians and bureaucrats going to Copenhagen seem to think that it’s unlikely that they’ll reach a deal and they know that even if they can get something signed, an increasingly sceptical public aren’t going to accept ever more expensive climate change policies. This means that a huge amount of money is going to be spent on the summit, and thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted to get there, just to give the delegates a good photo opportunity. Politicians need to stop this expensive jamboree and instead focus domestically on bringing down the ruinous cost to ordinary families of green taxes and regulations.”

The full report is here.

Saudi Arabia has called for an independent investigation into “climategate,” warning that the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) undermine the global-warming negotiations.

“We believe this scandal — or what has been referred to as the ‘climategate’ scandal — we think this is definitely going to affect the nature of what could be trusted in our deliberations,” the Saudi Arabian negotiator said.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has promised to investigate the scandals, although its chairman said on Monday that it provided no basis for questioning the science behind global warming.

But according to reports the Saudi negotiator told delegates that “the level of confidence is certainty shaken.”

Speaking to the BBC on the opening day of the two week summit, Mohammad Al-Sabban said “It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change,” he told BBC News. “Climate is changing for thousands of years, but for natural and not human-induced reasons.”

Diplomats, world leaders and United Nations officials warned Monday that the Copenhagen climate talks would be the best – and possibly last – chance to develop a global solution to global warming.

“Political will will never be stronger,” said Connie Hedegaard, the president of the conference. “This is our chance — if we miss this one, it could take years before we get a new and better one, if we ever did.”

Hedegarrd, UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, chief UN climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen addressed 15,000 delegates gathered for the opening ceremonies of the UN climate-change conference here.

“The clock has ticked down to zero — after two years of negotiation the item has come to deliver,” said de Boer.

De Boer said that delegates have just eight days to prepare a workable political agreement, before 110 heads of state come to Copenhagen to finalise the deal.

“The time for formal statements is over. The time for restating well-known positions is past,” he told delegates. “I urge you to build on your achievements — take up the work that has already been done and turn it into real action.”

Expectations for the talks have fallen dramatically from earlier this year, when environmentalists hoped negotiators would lead to a legally binding agreement. Now, negotiators aim to ink a framework that lays the groundwork to sign a treaty next year.

“The deal that we invite leaders to sign up on will be one that affects all aspects of society, just as the climate change does,” said Rasmussen.

Newspapers in 45 countries have issued world leaders gathering in Copenhagen with a stark choice – act decisively to save humanity from a “profound emergency” or allow climate change to “ravage our planet”.

Fifty-six newspapers published a common editorial today warning that failure to reach a “fair and effective” deal at the crucial UN talks will spell disaster for future generations.

Most of the newspapers, including the Guardian which spearheaded the project, have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front pages, according to The Guardian which drafted the piece during more than a month of consultations with editors ahead of the summit.

The editorial – to be published in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian in newspapers around the world ranging from France’s Le Monde to the Cambodia Daily and The Miami Herald – begins: “Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

“Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security.”

It continues: “Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days.

“We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest failure of modern politics.

“This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.”

The facts behind climate change are clear, it said. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C which will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next five to 10 years.

The editorial mentions the recent row over leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit which climate sceptics allege show scientists manipulating data to support a theory of man-made global warming. But while acknowledging that the controversy has “muddied the waters”, it said it ultimately failed to dent the mass of climate change evidence.