Tony Abbott has delivered a thinly veiled warning on climate change policy to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, arguing a new low emissions target should deliver cheaper power and not "clobber" Australia's economy.

The former prime minister took the job of opposition leader from Mr Turnbull back in 2009 because of a civil war in the Liberal Party over climate policy and on Wednesday, he said a new low emissions target (LET) should not stop the creation of new, more efficient coal-fired power stations.

While Labor has indicated it could take a bipartisan approach on the LET, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has had to hit the phones to calm conservative Coalition MPs concerned that a LET could, for example, force up power prices by increasing the use of renewable energy.

Mr Abbott said the nation's power system should be run to provide "affordable, reliable energy, not primarily to reduce emissions".

"My anxiety, based on the reports we have seen, is that the scenario which the Finkel report is recommending gives us not 50 per cent, but 70 per cent renewable energy by 2030 and coal, which is by far the cheapest source of base load power, and in most years is our biggest single export, coal goes from currently 65 per cent to 25 per cent of total energy generation," he said.

"Anything that makes it impossible for us to bank new, efficient coal-fired power stations I think is a big mistake.

"The Liberal Party has to be the party that you can rely on to bring power prices down, let the Labor party be the people who send prices up. I've spent a lot of time talking about Electricity Bill Shorten, the last thing we want to do is let Electricity Bill off the hook."

He also pointed out the global Paris agreement on climate change only set aspirational targets and was "not binding, it is not mandatory", but stopped short of saying Australia should follow America's lead and withdraw.

"As prime minister I made the point that we would use our best endeavours to get emissions down by 26-28 per cent, but we weren't going to clobber the economy in order to reduce emissions," he told radio station 2GB.

Mr Abbott's intervention will be heard loudly and clearly by the conservative wing of the Coalition, which is already stirring over climate policy, and is a further sign of potential trouble brewing for Mr Turnbull over an issue that has been the third rail of Australian politics for years.

Frontier Economics chief executive Danny Price, a leading energy economist, said that a LET could indeed, as Mr Abbott suggested, deliver 50 per cent renewable energy in Australia by 2030, and that reaching as high as 70 per cent renewable energy would be possible too - depending on how the scheme was designed.

"A LET supercharges subsidies for clean energies, it doesn't subsidise coal and what that then does is crowd out coal," Mr Price said.

Chief Scientist Alan Finkel's review of energy policy is due to be released on Friday and it is expected to recommend a LET that will offer subsidies to renewable energy technologies, gas and potentially carbon capture and storage coal-fired power plants.

It will reportedly recommend a carbon emissions target for the electricity sector of about 0.7 tonnes of carbon per megawatt hour and, in the short term, would see Australia rely more on coal than gas before moving to a greater reliance on renewables.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten wrote to Mr Turnbull on Wednesday to call for an end to the "climate wars" after a decade of division but warned Labor would not shift its principles on climate change.

"It's encouraging that some of the options being mooted, including a well-designed low emissions target, have as their central design feature a market mechanism that drives investment in renewable energy to set Australia up for the move to a clean energy future," Mr Shorten said.

Privately, Labor is indicating that it will be very difficult for it to support a LET that pleases climate change sceptics within the Coalition.

In particular, the amount of support offered to coal - once the Turnbull government formally responds to the Finkel review - could be a key sticking point.

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