The Turnbull government is working on a major redesign of the clean energy target that will likely fall short of the plan for almost half of Australia's electricity to be generated by renewables by 2030.

Internal discussions have commenced about a revised target that would set a higher emissions baseline than the 0.6 tonnes of carbon per megawatt hour suggested by the Finkel review. The revised scheme would allow high-efficency, low-emission coal-fired power plants that emit about 0.7 tonnes of carbon to receive partial certificates, or credits.

Political hard-heads in the Coalition believe that if the government were to adopt the 42 per cent target proposed by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, which is not far short of Labor's 50 per cent target, the government will not be able to win a fight that frames the opposition as the party of higher power prices at the next election.

As one MP put it, "if we were going to do Finkel's CET, it would be done already".