Malcolm Turnbull has poured cold water on a report claiming Labor's 50 per cent renewable energy target will not jeopardise reliability.
The Australian Council of Learned Academies report, commissioned by chief scientist Alan Finkel, found Australia could reach the mark without a "significant requirement for storage to support energy reliability".
But the prime minister disagrees, saying the finding is at odds with the advice of the Energy Security Board.
"You only have to look at South Australia to see what happens when you have a very large percentage of renewables and you don't invest in significant storage," Mr Turnbull told ABC radio on Monday.
"If you don't have the storage, the backup, you get the problems they had with big blackouts and high prices. That's where Labor is heading here if they don't get real and plan it properly."
Dr Finkel played down any link between the report and Labor's policy to achieve 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030.
"This is not a report that's making recommendations about anybody's policy at all," he told reporters in Canberra.
Its release comes ahead of a Council of Australian Governments Energy Council meeting in Hobart on Friday to discuss the federal government's national energy guarantee.
Labor leader Bill Shorten believes the finding backs up his party's policy.
"Yet again, more scientific and economic evidence that Labor's policy to encourage the use and take-up of renewable energy is the right path," he told reporters in Melbourne on Monday.
The report nominates pumped hydro energy storage as the cheapest way to meet a reliability requirement.
The government's Snowy Hydro 2.0 scheme aims to increase the generation capacity by 50 per cent, making up to 2000 megawatts available to the national electricity market.
A survey conducted as part of the report found Australians favour a higher renewable energy mix by 2030, while remaining deeply concerned about a rise in energy costs for which they blame governments.
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said Friday's COAG Energy Council meeting would discuss yet-to-be-released modelling of the proposed national energy guarantee.
It would "actually create more jobs, not just in the renewable sector but in manufacturing, in industries right around the country", Mr Frydenberg said.
He admitted there were a range of views among the states but the modelling would "inform their judgments".
