The Liberal National party’s reluctance to say how it would meet the state’s emissions reduction targets while backing coal-fired power has become an election issue

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Two years ago, former US vice-president and climate change campaigner Al Gore took to a pre-Elon Musk Twitter to congratulate Queensland for plotting a route to get the state off coal-fired power by the end of the next decade.

If this was possible in a state with “one of the most carbon intensive energy supplies” anywhere, Gore wrote, then “we need to see action like this around the world”.