The dialogue with the states that got mothballed when the Morrison government dumped the national energy guarantee looks set to reopen, with state energy ministers summoned to a meeting on 26 October.

Guardian Australia understands ministers were given word on Friday to come to Sydney for talks, the first meeting with the commonwealth since the Neg was dumped after the change of Liberal leadership. That scheduling puts the meeting only days before the Andrews government in Victoria goes into caretaker mode.

The new federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, has signalled he would like to pursue the reliability obligation originally proposed as part of the Neg with the states and territories, even though Canberra has now dumped the emissions reduction component of the scheme.

Taylor is also working up an agenda for cabinet on power price reductions, some of which could involve cooperation with the states, depending on what cabinet ultimately resolves over the coming weeks.

Taylor’s new package is based on a number of measures recommended by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. This week, the ACCC chairman, Rod Sims, championed his blueprint at an energy conference.

Sims also warned it would be foolish to wait for political agreement on emissions reduction before pressing ahead with formulating an energy policy, because Australia’s political parties have demonstrated, through the torturous Neg debate, that they have irreconcilable differences.

“There are many saying, for example, if you can’t get agreement on emissions reduction, then therefore we don’t have an energy policy,” Sims said.

“If your prerequisite for getting an energy policy is agreement on emissions reduction, I can only say good luck. Every political party in the country has a different approach on emissions reduction”.

Sims said the best way to move the debate forward was to separate out affordability, reliability and emissions reduction, rather than trying to formulate a policy to address all three, which is what the Turnbull government attempted.