'We can meet this challenge': PM pushes climate action

Countries need to make the economic case for lowering emissions, rather than just environmental ones, the prime minister has urged.

In a speech to the UN's Climate Summit on Wednesday, New York time, Anthony Albanese said the global shift towards renewables needed to be carried out in order to protect countries in the Pacific most at risk from climate change.

The summit was held on the sidelines of the United Nations' General Assembly and before the the pre-COP climate summit being held in Fiji and Tuvalu, which is being supported by Australia.

Mr Albanese said climate change remained an existential threat for Pacific nations, who have contributed the least to rising emissions.

"We can meet this challenge. We need to argue the economic case in order to have the environmental benefit," he said in the speech.

"The truth is that it makes good macroeconomic policy to shift to a renewable and clean energy revolution."

The prime minister said the benefits of cleaner air and equity would come from the shift to renewables, which was needed to protect the current way of life across the globe.

"For Australia, as it must be for all of us, that action starts at home," Mr Albanese said.

"The energy transition make (targets of 62 to 70 per cent emission reductions by 2035) attainable is well under way."

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres also told the summit of the need to express the economic benefits of shifting to renewable energy.

"Renewables are the cheapest, fastest, and most secure source of new electricity almost everywhere. Clean energy has gone from alternative to unstoppable," he said.

"We must match an accelerating crisis with accelerating action. Match a revolution in energy with a revolution in finance and match rising impacts with rising protection."

Mr Albanese also said elevating the climate risks of the Pacific would be critical as part of Australia's bid to secure a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 2029 and 2030.

A vote is not set to take place until mid-2028, but intense lobbying has been taken place on the sidelines of the UN.