Coal can help countries meet international climate targets emerging from next week’s Paris conference, the Minerals Council of Australia has said.

Greg Evans, an executive director of the council, said the industry had a role to play in reducing climate change.

“We see coal very much at the centre of this debate because it can lower emissions,” Evans told ABC radio on Friday. “The coal industry has the opportunity, has the technology through helipower and carbon capture and storage, to help deliver these [climate] outcomes.”

Australia will take a target to the Paris conference of reducing carbon emissions by between 26% and 28% of 2005 levels by 2030. On Friday Labor announced its target, a 45% cut by 2030.

The Paris conference is expected to reiterate the international commitment made in the Copenhagen agreement in 2009 to limit warming to 2C (36F).

Evans said the coal industry was “necessary” to Australia and could help get people out of poverty.

But Ian Dunlop, a former head of the Australian Coal Association, has rubbished the coal industry’s suggestion that there is a moral case to retain the energy source, an assertion famously adopted by Tony Abbott.

“It’s not true at all,” Dunlop told ABC radio on Friday. “There is no moral case for the use of coal, because the use of coal in the way we’ve been using it is going to cause massive poverty.

“If we keep on pouring money into coal mines, we’re going to exacerbate poverty and cause more problems.”

A survey has found that three out of five Australians believe coal is an energy source of the past and will soon be obsolete.

The survey of 1,507 people, conducted by Essential and commissioned by GetUp!, found that 77% of the respondents wanted the government to help coalminers transition into different forms of employment.

About 68% wanted the Coalition to match Labor’s commitment to source half of Australia’s energy needs from renewable sources by 2030.

On Friday, an open letter signed by 300 actors, musicians, novelists and others will be published in British newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian. The letter urges world leaders to take climate change seriously as they head to Paris.

Evans said the letter was a “stunt”.

Dunlop was among the signatories to another open letter, published in October, in which prominent Australians had called for the Paris conference to discuss banning new coalmines.

“I don’t think a lot of world leaders have focused on this as yet,” he said on Friday. “But the point is, if you don’t do it, there’s no way of staying below 2 degrees.”

Nearly 150 world leaders will arrive in Paris for the conference on Monday, aiming to work out a path towards reducing emissions after 2020.