Adrian Wyatt may have had his thespian ambitions thwarted by early fatherhood, but he is still a great showman. The founder of the property company Quintain Estates and Development had already compared himself to the messiah and an entire continent when he declares: "What I do for a living is the single most important thing in the world apart from stopping nuclear war."

What the 59-year-old chief executive does for a living is develop huge chunks of land, including 200ha (22m sq ft) around Wembley Arena and the tent formerly known as the Dome in London. While both projects have proved controversial, they have rarely been seen as a way of preventing Armageddon. But the fast-talking enthusiast has come to believe that the way we build and manage our urban communities is the key to saving the planet. Next Thursday, Quintain will host a conference in London on Building a Low-Carbon World, which will be attended by 500 people from business, finance and politics.

The "screaming atheist" had what he calls a Damascene conversion to the dangers of climate change four years ago while whale-watching with his family in Alaska. A combination of dapper City gent (bright blue shirt and matching braces) with the flowing grey hair and piercing blue eyes of a convert, Wyatt and his views are attracting interest from politicians and other interested parties. Speakers on Thursday include Stuart Rose, chief executive of retailer Marks & Spencer, and London mayor, Ken Livingstone, as well as environmentalists and Wyatt himself.

"What is amazing is that when I thought of this conference two or so years ago, it was radical," he says. "Now it's seen as mainstream." Along with industry peers, he has recently dined with the cabinet ministers David Milliband and Tessa Jowell and in just over a month's time he will meet the leader of the Conservatives, David Cameron.

"We need a broad church. We need our competitors to join in with us; we even need the state to join in with us to build a sustainable community," he says. The born-again developer, who likes to describe Quintain as "the thinking man's property company", believes that his industry must do something about the fact that 70% of all emissions are from the built environment, transport and food. "What we live in and the way we live in them is very important and conducive to saving the species."

Sustainable community

In a speech prepared ahead of next week's conference, Wyatt suggests that future projects must encompass access to locally sourced seasonal food, better design and technologies with walkable distances, car clubs, renewable energy and biodegradable packaging. In August, building work will start on a sustainable community in the centre of Brighton, one of three Quintain projects that are carbon-neutral communities.

Wyatt is also keen to use Quintain's financial power to back fledgling technologies such as a man-made stone that is both cheaper to produce and less harmful to the environment. A block sits in the company's boardroom, a prototype of what is expected to go into full-scale production in four to five years' time. "In my view, this will be as important as concrete or plastic," he says.

Such enthusiasm is hard to dispute, especially in a sector that is hardly top of the list of green industries. But it is harder to know what to make of Wyatt himself. A man who laughingly calls himself the messiah of sustainability drives a gas-guzzling Aston Martin ("its very old and I don't drive it much") and is having a replica of a 1927 two-seater aeroplane built.

Shortish and effervescent, it is not difficult imagining him shouting "poop, poop!" as he flies over the English countryside, which he frequently does for pleasure. When I question the sustainability of his own pastimes, he says that he has just bought a new house in Marylebone - to complement those in Hertfordshire and Italy - so he can walk to work. "I'm not going to be too hair-shirt about it," he says. "I'm not going to hug a tree or wear sandals or anything."

Ask one question and Wyatt is likely to provide a long discourse that encompasses several schools of political thought. When I ask how he was converted to the green cause, he says: "By way of explanation, one of my favourite sayings is that staying abreast of one's own ignorance is a lifetime's challenge. I'm quite genuinely surprised at how long I stayed in a state of blissful ignorance. But I guess more of that later."

Later - via a quick trip round Karl Popper, Machiavelli, John Nash and game theory among others - he says: "The answer is that we want to be as cradle to cradle as we possibly can be, subject to conflict resolution." Before I can ask what that means exactly, he is talking about carpet tiles for the compost heap and whether it is most grammatical or not to use "those or they".

"If you want to go back to the Hegelian dialectic, I am your man," he says at one point, just as what I really want to go back to is Wembley and its delays. John Plender, the Quintain chairman who has known Wyatt for years and whose columns for the FT provide a masterclass in saying what you mean, says: "[Adrian] hides an extraordinarily good maths brain and brilliant mind under a very jokey and often politically incorrect exterior. But time and again, he has turned out to have been one step ahead of the crowd."

Wyatt's conversation may be madly elusive but Quintain's response to the challenge of reducing carbon emissions could be commercially savvy, particularly for an industry facing increasing legislation in the area.

Wyatt admits: "This is not altruism, this is enlightened self-interest. We want to be an exemplar in the cause of responsible capitalism. For the avoidance of doubt, I am a capitalist. But the first rule of capitalism is don't kill the consumer." Wyatt's commercial sense - he has spotted early opportunities in unloved areas such as the Dome and Wembley as well as sectors such as the healthcare property market - has made his company a sterling stock market performer. Worth £15m when it floated 10 years ago, it is now worth about £1.1bn. Its share price has risen five-fold in the past five years despite underperforming against the sector last year after delays at Wembley and Greenwich.

These projects, although subject to delays and a high profile, are estimated by analysts to be worth £250m to Quintain in profits. Wyatt shares the common industry belief in lower taxes and regulations, of course. He believes the government should go further than it has and has called for a "carrot and stick" approach to integrated planning with tax reductions for planners who operate green policies and fast-track planning procedures. The latter are "tortuous" - the regeneration of the Dome site involved 42 individual contract negotiations with planning authorities.

Economics comes first

"The single most important thing the state can do for the messiah is simply joined-up thinking between fiscal, planning and energy." Wyatt, who has worked in property since qualifying in the early 1970s, also recognises the fair amount of realpolitik needed in the business. When the company picked Bellway Homes for its first residential development last September, environmental considerations came some way behind politics and economics.

"We wanted to get the ball rolling," he says. "There was a degree of frustration because this whole [Greenwich] peninsula had taken a long while. I have done this deal in the best interests of shareholders." He is equally practical about implementing some of his ideas for the environment. "The reality of this is that it's going to be a nightmare. The practical implications of changing the built environment is the biggest challenge the planet faces. You've got all the different agendas, the lack of joined-up thinking, all the naysayers, all these obstacles."

Wyatt almost became an actor but gave up his place at Rada when he became a dad at 21. He had studied surveying, he said, because "my mother said she had never seen a poor estate agent". He was at the property group Jones Lang LaSalle for 21 years, working in tax planning and financial structures before convincing the firm to set up a finance arm. Although relatively unusual then, investment in commercial property has paid dividends.

He became the first surveyor to qualify as a chartered financial analyst, making him an associate of the society of investment analysts, or Asia. "I became a continent: Asia. A continent, the messiah, not bad for a Brummie born in a council estate," he quips. Quintain now has a swanky new HQ in Mayfair - all black and white marble and matching amaryllis lilies - but Wyatt talks about the return of civic pride in Brent almost the way Ken Livingstone might.

Yet he supports neither of the main political parties, a sensible position for a man who talks to so many local authorities. "Tokenism amongst all politicians is verging on the puerile. My life is too important to get involved in politics."

After more than an hour of a wide-ranging conversation, Wyatt agrees to reconvene over the phone. "There isn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting my aspirations imbued in the built environment within a generation," he says, cheerfully, "but I'm going to try as hard as I can to get it imbued before I go to another place. I love that quote - a journey of 1,000 miles starts with the first step."

The CV

Born Birmingham, January 2 1948

Education Brockenhurst grammar school in Hampshire. Studied surveying at what is now the University of Portsmouth. Qualified as chartered financial analyst and surveyor

Career

1971 Joined Jones Lang LaSalle as surveyor. Went on to found its fund management arm

1992 Formed Quintain Estates and Development, which now owns large chunks of land around the Dome in Greenwich and Wembley stadium

Family Lives with third wife and two young children in homes in Marylebone, Hertfordshire and Florence. Two adult children

Interests Cycling, shooting, flying, reading and philosophy