Australian Workers' Union national secretary Daniel Walton wants Labor to embrace natural gas as a transition fuel to help support more renewable sources.

That position would put the opposition in line with the government, which is planning a gas-fired economic recovery out of the coronavirus pandemic.

"Instead of continuing to impotently hedge, Labor must embrace gas and we must explain why," Mr Walton wrote in Nine newspapers on Friday.

"Spewing out environmental buzzwords about the evils of fossil fuels while refusing to take a hard position just isn't good enough.

"Labor needs to tell a good economic story on energy and it needs a good economic storyteller to step up. Any more equivocating is not just morally indefensible, it's strategically moronic."

Labor's energy spokesman Mark Butler ruffled some feathers within the party this week by saying Australia's future prosperity can't be based on coal and gas.

The main critic within Labor is its resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon, who wants the opposition to embrace gas to help manufacturing.

But debate within the party has become tense, with Labor frontbencher Mark Dreyfus reportedly calling Mr Fitzgibbon "the idiot for Hunter" in debate over its energy policy.

Labor has not finalised its official energy policy but frontbenchers were on Friday quick to express their support for gas in the short term.

"Gas will have a role to play but the future is overwhelmingly renewable," shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC.

Australian Associated Press