'Vastly more ambitious'

Mr Edis said the upshot was that "we can achieve vastly more ambitious emission reduction targets with minimal difficulty and cost".

This adds to pressure on the government from federal and state Labor and industry to embrace a deeper emissions cuts target as energy minister Josh Frydenberg prepares to meet his state and territory counterparts on Friday to ask the Energy Security Board (ESB) to press on with the detailed design of the NEG.

Federal Labor is moving to embrace the NEG – which aims to combine emissions and reliability goals in a single policy – and plans to adopt a deeper emissions cuts target if it wins office, environment spokesman Mark Butler told Fairfax Media on Monday.

Labor states are hedging because the NEG seeks to absorb their more ambitious renewable energy targets in the national target, letting other states off the hook. But the renewable energy industry is also moving behind the NEG with major industry after the ESB made big concessions in its draft design, increasing the likelihood of it moving forward.

Victorian energy minister Lily d'Ambrosio – pictured on one of Melbourne's soon to be solar-powered trams – says Victoria won't approve a NEG that compromises her state's renewable energy goals. AAP

Green Energy Markets' calculations include large-scale wind and solar projects under construction, legislated auctions and tenders under Queensland and Victorian renewable energy targets, and announced corporate contracts.

It does not include rooftop solar installations, which hit a new monthly record of 127MW in March and were 56 per cent higher in the March quarter than in 2017's March quarter. Rooftop solar installations are running at an annualised rate of more than 1300MW, about 50 per cent above the level projected by Frontier for the ESB.


Original RET met

The corporate contracts include AGL Energy's proposed 500MW of wind capacity to help replace Liddell coal power station, expected to be operational by 2022, and 650MW of solar capacity proposed by Sanjeev Gupta's GFG Alliance to power its Liberty OneSteel works at Whyalla, South Australia.

Even excluding the AGL and GFG Alliance contracts, wind and solar generation by 2020 is expected to exceed the original Renewable Energy Target of 41,000 gigawatt hours, which the government slashed to 33,0000GWh under then Prime Minister Tony Abbott because it was said to be unattainable.

"The Turnbull government's argument that we can't go any further than the target they've proposed without imposing some kind of huge economic shock and threat to reliability is obviously not true because we're pretty much already there," he said.

"Frydenberg himself is saying that all the extra renewable energy that is about to enter the system will substantially push down power prices (as did the Frontier modelling for the ESB)."

Mr Edis said the ESB's Frontier modelling suggested the NEG would only deliver 10 million tonnes of carbon abatement by 2030 from electricity production, a fraction of the 128 million tonnes environment department modelling suggests will be needed.

He said this raises the question of where the rest of the abatement will come from to meet Australia's Paris target for a 26-28 per cent cuts across the economy. The government's Emissions Reduction Fund is almost exhausted, and the transport and farm sectors are growing their emissions at a rapid clip and unlikely to be reined in by a conservative government.

NEG emissions targets will add no new wind and solar investments: Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Alex Ellinghausen

"The federal government should at least put forward an emission reduction target for the NEG that is consistent with its economy-wide Paris target or provide the scope for the state governments to retire the MWh from renewable energy projects they support through their own schemes so they are additional to the NEG emission target," Mr Edis said.