Infigen Energy's managing director Miles George says power cuts, jobs and international investment are on the line.

Infigen Energy believes that the Prime Minister has struck a blow that will hit investors, employers and Australia's reputation as a stable investment environment.

Mr George said the reported intentions of Mr Abbott amounted to economic vandalism, pandering to the climate sceptic minority and representing a total misread of community aspirations.

"How does this fit with the PM's often stated position that 'Australia is open for business'?" Mr George asked.

"Work undertaken by the Review Panel showed that if the scheme was cut back or scrapped, electricity consumers would be worse off.

"This finding was consistent with previous modelling work undertaken by the independent Climate Change Authority, the renewable energy industry, large electricity users and Bloomberg showing that the affect of renewables' free fuel was to push down wholesale electricity prices by more than the small cost of the scheme."

Mr George said that what investors and financiers would find most troubling was the betrayal by the Coalition, whose election campaign had trust and integrity at its core.

"The Coalition's promise to maintain the RET was categorical," he said. "But the government has moved to hose down speculation that it will scrap the RET saying it remains committed to the policy and it doesn't have support from the cross benches either."

On Monday, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said that the government's position was to "keep the RET in place" amid speculation Prime Minister Tony Abbott and senior frontbenchers were moving to dump it.

This comes after the Australian Financial Review reported that Mr Abbott had asked the chair of a review of the RET to do more work on the option of abolishing the target.

Until now, it was considered that the review, led by climate sceptic businessman Dick Warburton, was more likely to recommend the target be scaled back rather than abolished altogether.

Environment Minster Greg Hunt is reported to be unhappy with moves by Mr Abbott, Treasurer Joe Hockey and Senator Cormann to abolish the RET under a scenario that would close the scheme to new entrants.

Senator Cormann would not confirm that such a plan was afoot, but he said the government intended to keep the target in place.

"Our position is to keep the renewable energy target in place," he said.

"The government remains committed to the renewable energy target, that is our policy.

"We are currently waiting for the results of a review which is on the way and obviously we'll make decisions once that review is received in an orderly and methodical fashion."

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is among the business groups that have written submissions to the government in favour of abolishing the RET.

Other business groups have demanded the so-called "true" 20 per cent scenario, which would cut the target back to about 27,000 gigawatt hours of renewable energy production by 2020.

The current RET of 41,000 GwH, originally estimated to represent 20 per cent of Australia's power supply by 2020, is now estimated to be closer to 27 per cent.

Mr George said he found it very disturbing that the government would force electricity consumers to pay more for their electricity by cutting the RET, while giving a multi-billion windfall gain to the large integrated power utilities.

"This approach will result in reduced competition in the electricity market and lock in place our reliance on coal-fired generation plant that is already well beyond its efficient design life," he said.

"Our reliance on increasingly expensive gas-fired generation would also increase. It's a lose-lose-lose outcome for electricity consumers."

If the government pulls the rug from under existing investments in renewable energy don't expect investors to come back to buy other infrastructure assets in this country," he added.