Energy minister Josh Frydenberg says he would welcome a new coal-fired power plant in Australia.

Despite the economic modelling for the Government’s own national energy guarantee (NEG) assuming there will be no new coal, Mr Frydenberg told News Corp: “I would welcome a new coal-fired power station for our country because it supplies reliable baseload power and it has served us well in the past and will continue to serve us well in the future.”

He said the NEG was far from an anti-coal policy.

“We have twenty coal-fired power stations in Australia today with an average life of 27 years,” the federal energy minister said.

“While they may not live forever, they will certainly live longer than that 27 years and the NEG will provide that level of stability for the investors and the owners of those assets.”

Under the guarantee, “the reliability that coal provides the system will be valued and [coal is] much more likely to be staying in the system under the NEG than not”, he said.

Mr Frydenberg will face a delegation of business leaders at a special meeting of the Coalition backbench committee on energy and the environment on Tuesday before the regular Coalition party room meeting.