Prime Minister Tony Abbott could remove another budget barnacle, save thousands of jobs and billions in investment by maintaining the renewable energy target, Labor says.
Standing beneath the whooshing blades of one of 90 wind farm turbines outside Canberra on Friday, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten described them as a prime example of Australia's energy future.
Treasurer Joe Hockey had previously described the same turbines as a blight on the landscape.
Mr Shorten said tens of thousands of people had invested in wind energy and that was now in jeopardy because the government was trashing the renewable energy industry and breaking another pre-election promise.
"Before Christmas, here is one barnacle you can remove from the budget and Australia. Why not do a bipartisan deal with the opposition about maintaining a renewable energy target," he told reporters.
"There are billions of dollars of investment at stake in Australia's future, thousands of jobs at stake and a sustainable future at stake."
The government wants to slash the renewable energy target of 41,000 gigawatt hours to about 27,000, saying that figure will represent 27 per cent of energy use by 2020 instead of the bipartisan agreed level of 20 per cent.
It has launched a review of the RET. That's left the renewable energy industry in limbo.
Miles George, managing director of Infigen Energy, Australia's largest wind farm operator and owner of the Woodlawn and Capital farms outside Canberra, said the uncertainty was having a severe effect on the industry.
He said $200 million had been spent on large scale renewable energy development this year, compared with $2 billion per year in recent years.
"The industry is virtually frozen. That's really bad from a new investment into regional areas," he said.
Mr George said the market for renewable energy certificates had crashed. For the Woodlawn Farm and its 23 turbines, that amounted to a reduction in value of $20 million, about 40 per cent of the initial investment.
He said the same applied for other wind farms around Australia.
"Projects like this one are really struggling. We are getting sub-economic returns and the investments that we made based on bipartisan support of the legislation are now being seriously damaged," he said.
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