Ed Miliband has torn into Nigel Farage and the Tories for peddling dangerous “nonsense and lies” by suggesting the UK’s net zero target is responsible for destroying Britain’s businesses, including its steel industry.

Cabinet ministers are determined to fight back against the way Reform UK and the Conservatives have unceremoniously lambasted the climate crisis agenda for what they believe are nakedly political reasons before important local elections next month.

Both Farage and the Tories have blamed the perilous situation at British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant on high energy costs, saying renewable energy prices have put the company on the brink.

Reform has also used the crisis to call for the UK to become self-sufficient in oil and gas by drilling more in the North Sea, despite the fact that stocks there are dwindling fast and most of what is produced is exported.

The total abandonment of the broad political consensus for net zero by parties on the right of UK politics – and by US president Donald Trump’s Republican administration in Washington – is causing serious alarm inside the UK government.

Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, is expected to “double down” on his Labour government’s commitment to a green energy future, and making the UK a clean energy superpower, at an International Energy Agency conference this week in London that will also be attended by pro-fossil-fuel officials from the Trump administration.

In an article for the Observer, Miliband, the energy secretary, says the argument for the UK delivering clean power by 2030 is the same as it was when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022: the need to free ourselves from dependency on foreign supplies, including from Russia, which can lead to uncontrolled price spikes for customers in Britain.

Referring to the soaring prices that shocked UK consumers in 2022 and that have continued to reverberate, he says: “Our exposure to fossil fuels meant that, as those markets went into meltdown and prices rocketed, family, business and public finances were devastated. The cost of living impacts caused back then still stalk families today.”

As a result, Miliband says breaking free of dependence on overseas supplies is also a matter of “national security”.

With an eye on the local and mayoral elections in England on 1 May in which Reform hopes to turn its recent national poll leads into council seats, Miliband says Farage’s party and the Tories “make up any old nonsense and lies to pursue their ideological agenda”.

Polling experts believe the attacks on net zero could backfire on Reform and the Tories because the policy is overwhelmingly supported by the public.

While Miliband has also been disparaged by the rightwing media over net zero, he is determined to fight back, not least because internal polling shows he and his policies remain popular within the Labour party.

Luke Tryl, UK director of polling organisation More in Common, said: “There’s no doubt Reform have channelled public discontent with the status quo and a desire for change into electoral momentum since last July.

“But their approach to climate change, along with stances on Ukraine and Farage’s relationship with Trump, risk becoming an achilles heel. Our research finds that in every UK constituency voters say they are more worried about climate change than not, and most see renewable energy as the path to energy security, jobs and cheaper energy.

“Even Reform voters themselves, despite being less enamoured by the idea of net zero, just aren’t that motivated by it, and certainly not compared to an issue like immigration.”

A Labour source said: “We will go after [Kemi] Badenoch and Farage on energy. They want to leave the UK exposed to markets controlled by [Vladimir] Putin – we are going to make the hard-nosed national security case for climate action.”

This week Farage will tour 10 counties in England promoting his anti-net zero policy and also touting his newfound support for the outright nationalisation of the British steel industry – normally an approach advocated by politicians on the left.

Miliband adds in his Observer column that if the anti-net zero agenda were followed, it would not only risk “climate breakdown” but also “forfeit the clean energy jobs of the future” in this country, and with them a great opportunity for economic renewal.

At a rally in Durham last week Farage said Reform would “reindustrialise Britain”, adding that this would require the country to start producing “enough of our own gas and oil and coal”. He said: “We should be self-sufficient in oil… We should be absolutely self-sufficient in gas.”

Climate groups have, however, criticised this rhetoric as “pure fantasy”, pointing to official projections that show a steep decline in North Sea production, regardless of government policy and intervention, owing to the ageing nature of the sea’s basin.

Far from being self-sufficient in gas, official forecasts show that the UK will be 94% reliant on gas imports by 2050 even if new fields were to be developed, only a fraction lower than if no new fields are developed (97% dependency).

Labour has been making its own case for energy independence, focusing on Great British Energy (GBE), which sources note is one of its most popular policies. The party will campaign heavily in the coming months on GBE’s policy of putting solar panels on the roofs of 200 schools and 200 hospitals.

Tessa Khan, executive director of climate action group Uplift, said: “Nigel Farage is peddling a dangerous fantasy by suggesting that the UK can secure its energy from North Sea oil and gas.

“As usual, he’s imitating Trump and his obsession with more drilling while ignoring that the UK’s remaining oil and gas reserves are dwindling fast after 60 years of extraction. That’s down to geology, not policies.”

Khan added: “By trying to slow the shift to renewable energy, which the UK has in abundance but which Reform is opposed to, Farage is endangering the creation of new jobs that provide a more secure, long-term future.

“The question for Reform is: what is its plan for the UK’s oil and gas workers, other than this dangerous fantasy?”

Most of what is left in the North Sea is oil, about 80% of which is exported. The sea is also a high-cost basin to drill and more production is only possible if oil and gas prices are so high that energy bills become unaffordable for most ordinary people, or with more generous tax breaks for developers.