Export earner Coal is Australia's second-largest export earner and keeps 55,000 workers in full-time direct employment. Its importance to the economy has made Australia the world's biggest per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases. Coalition policies inlcuding scrapping a 30 per cent tax on mining profits, have received support from resource companies and lobby groups. "Mining is a traditional supporter of the coalition and coal is the source of energy that it's invested a lot of political capital into," said Zareh Ghazarian, a professor at the Monash University School of Political and Social Inquiry. Under Abbott, Australia in July became the first nation to dismantle a levy on carbon emissions. Now the government is trying to pass laws to reduce the 2020 renewable energy target from wind and solar from the current 41,000 gigawatt hours of electricity, enough to power about 5.9 million homes, to between 26,000 and 28,000. The government says that target introduced in 2009 was designed to reduce reliance on fossil fuels by boosting renewable energy to 20 per cent of the electricity market by 2020. Due to shrinking power demand as the energy-intensive manufacturing industry contracts and efficiency improves, that share has already surged toward 26 per cent.

Renewable targets The windfarm industry has been the biggest beneficiary of the renewable target, with more than 1,600 turbines from 68 projects dotting rural landscapes. Wind supplied 4 per cent of the nation's electricity - equivalent to 1.3 million homes - at the end of 2013 with new investment almost doubling last year to $1.5 billion, according to the Clean Energy Council. The government's pledge to slash the renewable target has caused investment to dry up, Jotzo said. General Electric, which is building 67 turbines for the Boco Rock windfarm in NSW, may reconsider its plans. The largest US turbine maker has poured $US10 billion ($11.6 billion) into renewable energy globally. "We have invested and would like to continue to invest heavily around the renewable energy target in Australia, but certainty matters and we don't currently have that," GE's Australian managing director of sales and finance, Jason Willoughby, said in an e-mail. "These are long-lived investments and companies need a stable policy to have confidence." Jupiter project

A cut to the target may threaten the Tarago project near Tony Hill's home, according to EPYC, the Sydney-based company that may build as many as 100 turbines, some as high as 170 metres, at the site as part of its $400 million Jupiter project. "Obviously it would be beneficial to keep the [renewable energy target]," said Shahroo Mohajerani, EPYC's business development manager. "That incentive is attractive." The project has already created divisions among Tarago's population of 350, said Judy Alcock from her real estate office - one of the town's three shop-fronts open for business. "People either like it or they don't, there's no middle ground," she said. "Those that are against it feel they may be sold out by those that can generate an income from it." 'Beautiful landscapes'

On hills overlooking Lake George, 20 kilometres from Tarago, stands the Capital Wind Farm - the Infigen Energy-owned project that Treasurer Hockey called "a blight." "We get some beautiful landscapes in Australia and frankly putting up those towers is just, to me, quite appalling," Hockey told business leaders at an event in Sydney in September. "I don't worry much about what Joe Hockey thinks because he lives in Sydney," said Luke Osborne, a fifth-generation farmer who leases his 3,000-hectare property to Infigen, as he drives his electric-powered four-wheel drive around paddocks that hold 27 of the project's 67 turbines, each 124 metres high. A "soul-destroying" drought a decade ago, which he believes was exacerbated by climate change, spurred Osborne to investigate hosting a windfarm among his fields holding wheat, canola, beef cattle and fine-wool sheep. The 140-megawatt project now contributes about a third of the property's revenue - the difference between survival and going under, he said. Low-frequency rumble

Individual farmers earn as much as $250,000 annually from every 50 megawatts in capacity they host, according to a 2012 Clean Energy Council report. Provided the project is situated in areas of low density, Osborne believes negative impacts - including the low-frequency rumble the turbines can make in strong breezes or their potential to lower land values - were usually outweighed by the benefits of low-cost, clean electricity. During his visit to Canberra this week, China's President Xi Jinping oversaw the signing of a document that will showcase Chinese turbine technology at a windfarm project in Tasmania majority-owned by Shenhua Group that's targeting a wind portfolio in Australia of 700 megawatts by 2020. While Australia's government says it wants investment in the renewable energy industry to increase, Abbott is also aware that Australian coal exports were worth $39.8 billion last year and the fuel accounted for 64 per cent of the nation's electricity generation in 2012-13. Warming planet

The world must halt fossil-fuel emissions within the next six decades to stave off the irreversible impact that may stem from a warming planet, the United Nations said in its annual "Emissions Gap" report released on Wednesday. The International Energy Agency estimates that, based on current trends, the world may warm 3.6 degrees celsius by the end of the century, raising the risk of more violent storms, drought and rising sea levels. At the opening of a $3.4 billion coal mine in Queensland state last month, Abbott said coal "is good for humanity." "Sure, coal is a source of emissions, but it's also a source of energy and there can be no prosperity without energy." Bloomberg