Prime Minister Tony Abbott has delivered a damning criticism of renewable energy, slamming the technology as the leading factor behind high Australian energy prices.

It is an argument that is refuted by the Prime Minister’s own Treasury figures, but it has not stopped Mr Abbott from slamming the green power industry.

Speaking to Fairfax Media outlet the Australian Financial Review, Mr Abbott said renewable energy is driving up power prices “very significantly” and building Australia’s reputation as “the unaffordable energy capital of the world”.

The claim came at the same time as comments from informed, rational, Nobel laureate and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, who told the Crawford Australian ­Leadership Forum that Australia should have a carbon price.

The Prime Minister's comments have been taken as the strongest indication yet that he wants the Renewable Energy Target (RET) scrapped, as well as the abolition of the carbon tax.

One authority was able to use facts as a counter-argument.

Andrew Richards, head of external affairs at Pacific Hydro, told the AFR that the RET adds about $40 a year to average household power bill, which pales into insignificance against government-approved gas price rises in NSW which are set to add around $240 a year to the average household bill.

“Changing the RET to lower energy prices is mucking around in the shallow end of the pool,” he said.

The government-mandated RET inquiry is ongoing, but its modelling has already shown that fossil-fuel energy reduction policy will provide cheaper prices in the years ahead.

Furthermore, a number of sources have reported on the multi-billion-dollar upgrade of several states’ “poles and wires” electricity networks, which even the federal treasury admits is responsible for 51 per cent of the total electricity bill, in the form of “network charges”.

The Renewable Energy Target policy itself is a minor fraction of the average Australian electricity bill. Some Treasury analyses do not even include it, but the Australian Energy Market Commission says it makes up around 5 per cent.

Questions have recently been raised about the motivation for the Prime Minister’s vitriol towards new electricity forms, while some suggest it may be due to deep links with fossil-fuel energy companies.