This energy debate threatens to tear the Coalition apart "David Cameron doesn't know which way to go," says one senior Lib Dem. Mr Hayes, meanwhile, has the hotline to the Chancellor that the Energy Secretary lacks, partly because Coalition protocol decrees that all communication is done through the Quad of senior figures including Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. On Monday, Mr Osborne and Mr Alexander met three times to try to finalise the Energy Bill. Although the polar ice cap is melting faster than glacial Government relationships, the Bill - which Mr Davey pledged to deliver this month - was yesterday said to be near agreement. Unless things go wrong, which is highly possible, both sides may be able to claim a victory. I am told that the Chancellor will get his way on a "dash for gas" and that the Autumn Statement in early December may contain a generation strategy with ambitious plans for the production of shale gas, which many Tories much prefer to renewables. While Mr Davey keeps an open mind on the potential size of the reserves, he discounts ideas of a fracking revolution replicating the US boom. Sources say that he believes fracking offers no "silver bullet" and that extravagant claims for its potential are "ignorant and without evidence." Opponents are already consoling themselves that Mr Osborne's "obsession" with gas in general is a fantasy and not a policy. Lib Dems will claim, assuming there are no last-minute hiccups with the Bill, that the big winner is Mr Davey, who seems likely to get what he wants on renewables, including onshore and offshore wind, with subsidies to woo the investors alarmed by Government indecision. The big question is what happens to the planned centrepiece of the Bill - a promise to decarbonise energy generation by 2030. I understand Mr Davey will have to forgo that prize, although the Bill may contain a more modest target. In any case, the Lib Dems reason that long-term supply issues can be rectified in the next parliament. While this compromise may anger green groups, the Tory Right would be incandescent. With 4,000 more turbines set to be built across Britain, wind farms are a totemic issue for the omnisceptics who don't like Europe in any of its forms, including EU directives on carbon emissions, and deny the reality of climate change. Mr Hayes's personal promise (now unlikely to be fulfilled) to "protect our green and pleasant land" is riven with irony. Climate change sceptics are avid conservationists, alert to the merest whiff of chestnut blight in Sussex. Should any Asian long-horned beetle consider breeding in the maple trees of Kent, it is reckoning without the yeomen of rural England, who treasure the English countryside. Yet those fixated on plant pathology are immune to the climate pathology outlined in the World Bank's warning - the third apocalyptic report in 10 days - that unless greenhouse gas emissions are urgently curbed, unprecedented heatwaves, droughts and floods will lead to countless deaths and economic meltdown. Nor, in a volatile Middle East, can Mr Osborne safely rely on tankers bearing liquid petroleum gas from Qatar through the Strait of Hormuz. While it is legitimate to question the cost and efficiency of renewable energy, not least wind farms, the Energy Secretary is broadly right and the climate change dinosaurs are wrong. Although many "turquoise" Tories are on Mr Davey's side, the energy battle is inevitably clouded by narrow political considerations. Some senior Lib Dems, convinced that Labour will either win outright in 2015 or be the largest party, speculate wistfully about how much easier it might be - on this issue if not on others - to be in partnership with Ed Miliband, whom Mr Davey was said to admire during the Labour leader's time as energy secretary in the Brown government. While Lib Dems respect the Chancellor, much as they may disagree with him on electricity supply, energy policy has unleashed some poisonous exchanges. Peter Lilley, one of John Major's "bastards," a strident critic of Lib Dem energy policy and a member of the energy select committee that questioned Mr Davey yesterday, is described by one foe as "particularly ghastly." Despite bitterness on both sides, the future of Britain's energy supply is one of the few issues that must transcend narrow political considerations. Yesterday an alliance of 200 investment institutions, controlling £13 trillion in assets worldwide, begged Mr Osborne to act faster on climate change. That petition, which adds to the pressure on the Chancellor to cut Britain's reliance on gas, is part of a worldwide lobbying exercise before the international climate change negotiations that begin in Doha on Monday. The chances of this summit producing substantive change are less likely than wind turbines springing up in John Hayes's back garden. Arch-sceptics apart, citizens of rich nations have an Augustinian view on climate change: make me green, Lord, but not quite yet. With time running out, economic growth and a secure and affordable energy supply hang in the balance. The future of unborn generations will depend, in part, on a battered Energy Bill now being wrangled over to the bitter end.