This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The chairman of the Coalition’s backbench energy committee, the outspoken conservative Craig Kelly, says the government needs to axe current subsidies for households and businesses to install renewable energy technology like solar panels.

With the Morrison government in the middle of formulating its new energy policy, and with Labor now promising to maintain subsidies for households and businesses to install small-scale renewable energy until 2030, Kelly told Guardian Australia the Coalition needed to wind up the program.

The government’s energy policy rework will take up a number of recent recommendations from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s examination of the electricity market.

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The competition watchdog has called for the federal small-scale renewable energy scheme (SRES), which provides rebates for installations of renewables, to be abolished by 2021, but it is not yet clear if the government will accept that recommendation.

Bill Shorten used an interview with Guardian Australia last week to signal Labor will keep the SRES scheme until 2030 but Kelly declared ahead of the regular meeting of the government’s backbench energy committee: “I think the ACCC report is correct and this scheme should be wound up in its entirety.”

The former prime minister Tony Abbott has already prevailed upon the energy minister, Angus Taylor, to axe the small-scale scheme and the federal renewable energy target, which is due to wind down from 2020 will not be replaced by the government.

This week, members of the pro-coal Monash Forum are scheduled to dine at parliament house with Trevor St Baker, part-owner of the Vales Point coal generator and founder of the business electricity retailer ERM Power. St Baker has previously signalled interest in pursuing a replacement for the Hazelwood power station if the federal government settles on a favourable energy policy.

The government has signalled it wants to encourage new investment extending the life of existing coal and gas plants, and upgrading ageing facilities, with an objective of boosting supply.

The Coalition has been on the back foot politically over climate and energy policy since dumping the national energy guarantee, and climate change has been a significant problem for the Liberals in the Wentworth byelection, where the Morrison government faces the risk of losing its one-seat majority in the lower house.

Taylor is due to meet with his state and territory counterparts later in October to try and salvage the reliability component of the Neg even though the government has dumped the accompanying emissions reduction target of 26% for the electricity sector.

The meeting in late October is expected to consider the future of the reliability obligation and the implementation of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s recommendation that energy companies give consumers a default retail offer.

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There is expected to be a broad discussion of the ACCC’s recommendations for making power pricing more transparent for consumers.

Taylor said the looming talks would centre on “bringing power prices down while ensuring the reliability of the grid”.

“Decisive action on key recommendations from the ACCC’s retail electricity pricing report is central to delivering relief to families and businesses.”

The ACT’s climate change minister, Shane Rattenbury, told Guardian Australia he was happy to consider the reliability obligation at the looming meeting with Taylor.

“The reliability mechanism can probably go ahead in some shape or form,” he said. “We haven’t formed an official view on that yet but, in the broad, I’m happy to consider it.

“We will need to see if they have changed the architecture of the scheme and think about how the reliability obligation sits by itself.”