The legislation will cut Australia's RET to 33,000 gigawatt hours by 2020 from 41,000GWh, a target that has received the CEC's stamp of approval.

Not only does the CEC believe the target is "entirely achievable", chief executive Kane Thornton said several companies had already begun talking about the "many opportunities" available once the bill is passed by Parliament.

"The signs are good that the renewable energy industry, which has languished in an environment of policy uncertainty and lost opportunity for more than a year, is ready and waiting to grab hold of the many opportunities in the wind – and the sun, the waves and much more," CEC chief executive Kane Thornton said.

"Approximately 6500 jobs and $10 billion worth of investment are set to be created by the large-scale renewable sector alone. With household renewables included, this takes the total up to 15,200 jobs and $40.4 billion worth of investment over the life of the scheme."

The CEC has released analysis detailing the opportunities available under the revised RET and Thornton noted that between 30 and 50 major projects would be built to meet the 33,000GWh target, along with hundreds of medium-scale solar projects from commercial and industrial businesses that wanted to manage their own electricity production and consumption.

“Medium-scale solar projects also tend to have much shorter lead times than large-scale power plants, and we can expect that the bipartisan deal on the RET will deliver many more of these projects into the future,” Thornton said.

“The RET is entirely achievable, and is a fantastic opportunity for the renewable energy industry, local communities and the Australian economy.

“About 6000 megawatts of new generating capacity will be needed to meet the target. We already have more than 40 projects, adding up to 6600MW of approved projects in the pipeline.”

These projects include:

• Solar Choice's $1 billion solar farm on Queensland’s Darling Downs
• Westgen's solar farm on the outskirts of Perth
• FRV's 150MW solar power plant in Clare in Far North Queensland
• Senvion's CERES wind farm on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula
• Conergy's 35MW of large-scale solar projects
• CWP Renewables proposed Sapphire Wind Farm in the NSW Northern Tablelands region.

However, the Greens have called on Labor to abandon its deal, primarily because it includes a proposal that even the CEC has opposed – using wood waste fuel as a renewable source, specifically burning of low quality native forests to generate electricity.

“This is Bill Shorten's first big test on the environment, and it's time to walk away from this deal,” Greens leader Richard Di Natale said.

“Burning native trees is not renewable energy.

Greens deputy leader and climate spokeswoman Larissa Waters said: "Attempting to meet a weakened renewable energy target by burning native forests will further erode our international reputation and cement Australia as a climate pariah".

Earlier this week, ABC Radio National also reported that leaked documents from VicForests revealed multimillion dollar tax payer losses from continued logging of East Gippsland's native forests and indications that the company was keen to burn low quality forests to generate electricity under the RET.

“Burning native forests to produce electricity is an archaic proposal, completely inconsistent with what Victorians would consider a wise and sustainable use of their forests,” GECO spokesman Ed Hill said.

“The leaked documents reveal VicForests’ business plan in East Gippsland is unviable.

“These documents reveal there is no market for native forest saw logs in East Gippsland and the industry in the region is not commercially viable.

“Should burning of native forest be allowed under the RET, there’s a real risk that VicForests would become a company whose sole business is burning native forest for biomass energy."

As the reports show the saleability of VicForests' existing wood is in decline, Hill believes any suggestion that burning native forests to generate electricity would make the company's product more marketable is a joke.

“Native forest biomass would be a high volume, low value industry that will have disastrous effects not only for biodiversity and threatened species but also the saw log industry as the resource would be sent to forest furnaces to produce low value, dirty energy,” Hill said.