Environmental lobby groups will begin campaigns to call on Victoria and Queensland to back out of the National Energy Guarantee, as ACT Climate Change Minister Shane Rattenbury says proponents of the guarantee are crushing dissent.
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Mr Rattenbury sat down for "crisis talks" on the guarantee with renewable energy industry and environmental group leaders on Tuesday.
Mr Rattenbury told the webinar forum the proposal by the federal government was "not going to deliver the energy policy that Australia needs".
He is the only state or territory leader to raise concerns about the proposed framework, which would lock retailers into reducing carbon emissions by 26 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030.
"The ACT is getting enormous pressure as being the only jurisdiction that has concerns," Mr Rattenbury said.
"People are trying to crush dissent."
Smart Energy Council chief executive John Grimes has signalled the start of a "round-the-clock" campaign to stop the Victorian state government from signing on to the guarantee on August 10.
"The Victorian government does not want to make this a state election issue," Mr Grimes said.
"[They] could be making the biggest political miscalculation without meaningful policy."
Mr Rattenbury and his fellow panellists agreed the reduction target was not ambitious enough, risked Australia's environment future and would cost more for other industries, including agriculture and transport.
The federal government has asked all jurisdictions to sign on to the guarantee by August 10, a deadline Mr Grimes said was artificially set for political reasons.
The proposed guarantee has two components: a reliability component requiring energy retailers to have enough resources to deliver supply 99.998 per cent of the time each year; and an emissions component, requiring the energy sector to reduce emissions by 26 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
Federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg has said state governments could aim for higher emissions cuts as long as they met the reliability component of the guarantee.
Mr Rattenbury has previously said the guarantee would prevent states and territories exceeding the targets.
On Tuesday, he said an option should be inserted into the guarantee allowing the 26 per cent reduction target to be increased.
"There's an irony there of course this is all meant to be about certainty," Mr Rattenbury said.
He also said by not requiring the energy sector to do the heavy lifting in emissions reductions, the agriculture, mining and transport sectors would be forced to reduce emissions to help meet Australia's commitments to the Paris Agreement.
The Paris Agreement requires signing nations to reduce their entire carbon emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. The National Energy Guarantee only requires the energy sector to reduce their carbon emissions by 26 per cent, requiring other sectors to act to help Australia meet the Paris targets.
"It will simply see us push up costs for food, transport and other [industries]," Mr Rattenbury said.
Roger Price, the chief executive of Canberra-based international renewable energy company Windlab, said no guarantee was better for the environment than a bad guarantee.
"We don't have a real reliability issue in the system, this is a political scare campaign," Mr Price said.
"In all reality our electricity network was built by independent states. The federal government has only got involved in the last 15 years."
Mr Price said states and territories could operate independently in these sectors in their own right.
