Tamworth parents and friends for climate action member, Tessa Rainbird, said it was good to finally see the federal coalition agree to the target, but if that's as far as it will go, then it's still behind where it needs to be.

"Our group welcomes that announcement after years of stalling by the government to make an emissions commitment," she said.

"But without a firm commitment to cut emissions drastically by 2030, it's going to be a matter of too little too late, it's just not going to be enough to keep our climate safe."

The Nationals' insistence on having coal and gas remain large parts of Australia's energy sector for the foreseeable future has also raised alarms for Ms Rainbird, who said the focus needs to be mainly on renewables.

Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce disagrees though, and said he doesn't want to see the country wind up like the UK, which he said made the jump too quickly.

"They came up with really ambitious targets and now they've had a six-fold increase in energy prices," he said.

"It's getting worse as they're heading into winter and people are having to make a choice as to whether they eat or heat their house.

"We're not going to do anything stupid that gets us into the same fix as they did over there."

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But Ms Rainbird believes relying on coal and gas won't help the nation move forward and will make it difficult to achieve any decent emissions targets.

"In our view, on the pathway to a carbon neutral economy, there's no place for new coal or gas, we need to look to renewables and not be propping up those industries beyond their natural lifespan.

Despite strong support by some members of the Nationals for nuclear power in recent years, it will not be part of the government's plan to get to net zero by 2050.

Ms Rainbird said she thought that was probably the right call given it can take a long time to set up and Australia has to act fast.

Mr Joyce also said the reason the Nationals committed to the target was because Prime Minister Scott Morrison was going to take it to the Glasgow climate summit anyway, and not supporting it would have put the government at risk.

He said if his party didn't support it then it would've caused friction, which would've led to Nationals MPs quitting, in turn leading to chaos and an election which he believes "we would've lost".

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