Australia's top business groups have cautioned the government against making any more changes to the renewable energy target.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has resisted pressure from conservative backbenchers, including predecessor Tony Abbott, to dump the target.
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"The RET is the result of hard-won compromise, rather than anybody's perfect policy and should be left alone," Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox and Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott said on Wednesday in a joint statement.
"Additional changes to the existing RET would further undermine the credibility of national energy policy, damage investment and encourage state renewable energy schemes."
Further proliferation of "ambitious and fragmented" state schemes would cost people more than having a single, effective national policy.
The business groups said it was proper to have debate about other reforms to the energy market and climate policy since the RET had always been intended as one part of climate change policy.
Those pushing for the mandatory use of renewable energy to be dumped claim increased use of wind and solar power is behind recent spikes in electricity prices.
But Mr Willox and Ms Westacott said there was no reason to think any changes to the RET would reverse the shifts in supply and demand that were lifting prices.
"Australia needs a suite of durable, post-2020 climate change policies that are integrated with broader energy policy and are capable of delivering Australia's emissions reduction targets, at lowest possible cost, while maintaining competitiveness and growing Australia's future economy," they said.
Mr Turnbull noted the RET was cut from 27 per cent to 23 per cent when it was "restructured" under Mr Abbott's leadership just 18 months ago.
"As he said at the time, it created certainty for investment in the renewable energy space," the prime minister told reporters in Canberra on Monday.
"It was very important that that certainty be maintained.
"We're committed to the renewable energy target as restructured at the time and it will not be changed."
Mr Abbott told a Young Liberals conference at the weekend the government's first big fight of the year should be stopping further mandatory use of renewable power.
Building on remarks he made earlier in January, Mr Abbott said the past year had shown what happens when mainstream parties lose touch with their supporters.
"The public are not mugs. We can't credibly attack Labor merely for being worse than us," he was reported as saying.
Mr Abbott claimed Labor's aspirational target of 50 per cent would cost households $5000 against the $1000 impost from Coalition policies.
Opposition energy spokesman Mark Butler said Mr Abbott's sniping showed a revenge obsession with Mr Turnbull, while the Greens said the Prime Minister had to put his predecessor in his place.
"The best thing the Prime Minister could do to put Tony Abbott back in his box is expand the RET, not cut it," Greens energy spokesman Adam Bandt said.
The sniping over the RET comes as new research finds upgrading Australia's coal-fired power stations to cut emissions would cost up to $38 billion more than making the same reductions with renewable energy.
Ministers in recent weeks have been extolling the benefits of ultra supercritical coal-fired power stations.
But Dylan McConnell, from Melbourne University's Climate and Energy College, said their price tag was astronomical compared with renewables.
Federal government figures estimate switching Australia's coal power generators to the new, cleaner technology could cut emissions from the electricity sector by 27 per cent.
Mr McConnell calculates this would require 20 gigawatts worth of ultra supercritical coal power stations, costing $62 billion.
Achieving the same cut in emissions using new renewable energy generators would cost between $24 billion and $34 billion.
"Replacing Australia's current ageing coal fleet with newer models to cut emissions is possible, but the question is why anyone would choose to do so given the lack of cost-competitiveness," Mr McConnell said.
AAP