Labor leader Anthony Albanese has proposed bipartisan talks with the Coalition on a new national energy policy in order to end 10 years of stagnation.
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Mr Albanese has written to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, proposing that the federal government and opposition begin formal negotiations on a bipartisan energy policy framework.
He said the draft technology investment road map recently unveiled by Energy Minister Angus Taylor presented a "technology transition story" that was largely consistent with past Labor policy and expert advice, with renewable energy at the centre of Australia's future.
However, the road map "says where we are going as a country but it doesn't answer the question of how we get there", Mr Albanese said.
"We have an opportunity to move beyond past partisan approaches to energy policy, to draw on the community's clear desire for more bipartisan approaches to difficult policy areas and to finally deliver an enduring, effective and bipartisan energy policy for Australia," Mr Albanese wrote.
However there were some caveats.
While Labor is not calling for the National Energy Guarantee or Clean Energy Target to be revived, any framework it supported must be scalable to different emissions reduction targets by future governments.
Mr Albanese said it was also not necessary that the parties agreed on any particular targets, so long as they were expandable and could provide investors with certainty.
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Labor would also support the development and use of carbon capture and storage, including new government schemes to fund these technologies.
It would also support the creation of Australian carbon credit units, to be available for Emission reduction fund auctions and the offset market.
This could be controversial, given carbon capture technologies have been seen as the saviour for the coal industry.
Labor also wants the government to commit to refunding the Australian Renewable Energy Agency or ARENA, so it can help deliver the technology road map.
Australia has been without a national policy to encourage investment in new electricity generation since the Renewable Energy Target was met late last year.
The National Energy Guarantee was declared dead in late 2018, after the policy failed to win the support of the Coalition party room.
Investment in renewable energy generation fell by 50 per cent in 2019, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia.
