"That's really why banks and electricity companies across the country are all saying this is simply completely uninvestable and unrealistic."

Labor's policy centres on a goal of 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030 and an emissions intensity scheme for the power sector to gradually force the transition towards cleaner generation.

Last year, Labor leader Bill Shorten said: "I am not a rampant greenie who thinks there is no place for fossil fuel in our energy mix in the future" but, at the same time, climate change needed to be tackled.

Last week, Mr Turnbull said coal, as well as gas, was needed to provide reliable base load power while storage technology for renewable energy was being developed. He said Australia needed to be technology agnostic and that energy priorities should be security and cost.

The government has flagged subsidising the construction of a clean coal power plant using the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg told Sky News the government was "very serious".

The Coalition claims that the existing energy providers have a vested interest in keeping out new entrants and that there are willing investors in clean coal.

"While that technology is being developed, the more we can keep baseload power – whether it's coal or whether it's gas – in the system, the more stable the system will be," Mr Frydenberg said.

In a sign of the fight to come, Mr Frydenberg said Labor's "diabolical quadrella of policies" – its 50 per cent renewable target, a 45 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030, the forced closure of coal fired power stations and an emissions intensity scheme – will all combine to threaten energy security and drive up electricity prices.

It has also ramped up its push to have the states lift moratoriums on coal seam gas extraction to boost the supply of gas and lower the cost. As well as considering compensation for farmers whose land would be accessed, Mr Turnbull also flagged last week the establishment of domestic gas reservations, similar to that being planned in Queensland.

That scheme, developed with advice from former minister Ian Macfarlane, now chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council, would help guarantee a more secure supply of the fuel for domestic use but still at the market price.