The federal energy minister has defended linking his concerns about the stability of renewable energy with South Australia's power outage, which was caused by strong winds and lightning damaging supply infrastructure.
Josh Frydenberg acknowledges that wind knocked down more than 20 transmission towers in South Australia while a lightning stike damaged a power station which caused two interconnectors to shut down.
But he's also repeatedly raised the fact that South Australia gets 40 per cent of its electricity from wind and solar power.
He noted on Wednesday and again on Thursday that renewable energy was intermittent, which creates issues for the stability of the system.
"Because right now in this country we have a hodgepodge of renewable energy targets that are spread differently across the state, territory and federal governments and that's not ideal from an economic position," he told reporters in Melbourne.
He argued unrealisticly high state targets could raise "real issues for the stability of the system ... and the most efficient allocation of resources".
Asked whether he'd been disingenuous to link the SA storm with the state's renewables he said "energy policy and climate change are two sides of the one coin".
"There are broader questions about the future of energy security in this country ... when it comes to the speedy uptake of renewable and whether the system is built sufficiently to take into account the impact of that change."
Mr Frydenberg argued the Commonwealth was transitioning "progressively" while the states had "rushed ahead" with high or unrealistic renewable energy targets.
Mr Frydenberg was further asked to respond to critics who've suggested that without more renewable energy there'll be more extreme weather events like the one-in-50-year storm that turned off the lights in South Australia.
"The issue here is not about climate change leading to the events of yesterday," he said.
"The real issue here is, is the system strong and resilient enough, built for purpose, to actually deal with these particular events."
Greens energy spokesman Adam Bandt later accused the federal government of opportunistically using a storm "fuelled by global warming" to attack the answer to dangerous climate change.
"For Malcolm Turnbull to use this as an opportunity to urge governments around the country to slow down the up take of renewable energy is reprehensible and craven and he should be condemned for it," Mr Bandt told reporters in Melbourne.
