By Poppy Johnston in Canberra

The climate wars may be back with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese going on the offensive after the Opposition leader announced he plans to drop a target on emissions if elected.

The coalition still wants to reach net zero by 2050 but leader Peter Dutton plans to ditch the interim 2030 target to cut emissions by 43 per cent.

Mr Albanese said abandoning the 2030 goal amounted to “walking away from the Paris Accord”.

“If you walk away from the Paris Accord, you’ll be standing with Libya, Yemen and Iran and against all of our major trading partners and all of our important allies,” he said in Canberra on Monday.

“Peter Dutton is worse than (former coalition prime minister) Scott Morrison on climate change.”

Under the Paris Agreement to limit global temperatures to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, members must increase their emissions targets every five years.

Shadow climate change and energy minister Ted O’Brien said the Paris Agreement would not be “ripped up” were a coalition government elected next year when polls are expected.

Yet he said the government had no chance of meeting its 2030 target, which included a plan for 82 per cent renewables, and his party would not be “basing our targets on false promises”.

“By Labor failing to achieve their 43 per cent target, they will be in breach of the Paris Agreement,” he told ABC radio on Monday.

The prime minister said it was possible to meet the 2030 target and renewables projects would “ramp up” with his government providing business certainty.

“I’m very confident that we can get there but, importantly, that we must get there,” he said.

Carbon Market Institute chief executive officer John Connor said weakening or failing to meet national emissions commitments “was not technically a breach of, or withdrawal from, the Paris Agreement but is clearly against its spirit and intent”.

He said watering down what is known as a “nationally determined contribution” would be “globally historic” and could have severe diplomatic and economic consequences.

“The European Union has made participation in the Paris Agreement a condition of each free trade agreement since the Paris Agreement was first signed in 2015,” Mr Connor said.

The coalition is still working on its energy policy but it is expected to include plans for nuclear energy plants on the sites of old coal-fired power stations.

A CSIRO report released in May showed a nuclear power plant would cost at least $8.5 billion and could take beyond 2040 to complete due to infrastructure, security and safely hurdles.

Has Dutton just relaunched the climate wars?