The energy secretary, Chris Huhne, has attacked his Conservative colleagues in government as "rightwing ideologues" and "deregulation zealots" for placing environmental regulations on a list of red tape to be considered for scrapping.

In comments made at the weekend to a conference of social democrats in his party, Huhne made it clear he is opposed to environmental protection laws such as the Climate Change Act, the Wildlife and Countryside Act and the National Parks Act being included in the government's review of regulations in force in the UK.

His views are thought to reflect a range of opinion within Liberal Democrats in government. A source close to Huhne said he was supported by the business secretary, Vince Cable, and Lib Dem ministers were braced to do battle over hundreds of regulations they believe their Tory colleagues will be inclined to discard. The move is part of a Lib Dem strategy to fight their corner more aggressively that has been evident in the party leadership's successful opposition to the NHS changes.

Huhne said: "Between the obsession with micro-management and target-setting displayed by the Labour party, and the fixation with deregulation and scrapping rules just because they are rules on offer from some rightwing ideologues, we Liberal Democrats have a real chance to define an evidence-based, intelligent and distinctive approach."

A source said: "We are taking issue with this ideology that less regulation is inherently better. Regulation can be incredibly important. When the process comes to a head in the autumn, we are certainly not going to be letting regulations go. We will be fighting and we have quite a lot of ministers on our side."

Members of the public are being encouraged to pass comment on all regulations listed on a government website called the "red tape challenge". If enough people call for an item to be discarded, the onus is on ministers to explain why it should be protected. The list includes 278 environmental regulations at a time when a movement to scrap legislation such as the Climate Change Act has been growing more muscular. The former head of the civil service Lord Turnbull recently became the highest-profile individual to call for its repeal.

In his speech Huhne said: "Whatever the good intent, we have mistakenly given the impression that an exercise designed to scrap unnecessary minor bureaucratic hurdles is now placing the cornerstone of climate protection under threat. Of course this is nonsense. Let me assure you: there is a very good case for our key regulations protecting the environment to stay."

But he went on to list a series of problems with the government's approach to deregulation.

He said he believed the current guiding principle – "one in, one out", whereby a new regulation can be brought forward only if another one is discarded – does not work with environmental regulations. "This is a sensible approach, but there are some new areas, like climate protection, where we need to be realistic if there are no old regulations of equal impact to scrap."

He also said a belief that regulation always had a cost was "fatuous", and deregulation often had unintended consequences.

"How would a deregulation zealot have dealt with the Montreal protocol, for example, the most effective international environmental treaty to date? Under the protocol, in 1987, countries agreed to phase out the production and consumption of CFCs and other chemicals that destroy the ozone layer. These regulations didn't replace anything, as no one knew until the 1980s that CFCs were harmful.

"We need to remember that deregulation can have unintended consequences. Take the example of digging up roads and pavements. Thirty years ago only about a dozen companies had the right to dig up public roads. Then in the 1990s, with the privatisation of utilities and the advent of cable TV, this ballooned to over 150. Streets were dug up repeatedly with no co-ordination or control. Congestion wastes time, and time costs money.

"The belief that regulation always implies costs is equally fatuous – something that's obvious to Liberal Democrats, who have never taken the view that the market is always right."

He pointed to the mobile phone market, saying the US had adopted a laissez-faire approach, with the result that American mobiles did not work outside state, or even city, lines. "At one point the USA had no less than 16 separate and incompatible networks. In contrast, the EU adopted a single standard, GSM, which established global roaming. This was so effective that today, of the world's largest 20 mobile networks, six are European and only two are American – and they're in 19th and 20th places."

He also cited work done by the US energy secretary, Steven Chu, who has looked at the impact of energy standards on US refrigerators over the last 50 years. "For the first 30 years, fridges, and their energy use, got steadily larger. Then in 1978 the first energy standards were introduced. Fridges still got bigger, but energy use plummeted. But the most significant thing? The real price of the fridge to consumers fell steadily over the full 50-year period."

Huhne added: "Regulation can help make businesses globally competitive, drive down costs for consumers and realise benefits for the environment, society and the economy as a whole. Win, win, win. The argument shouldn't be about regulation versus deregulation, more laws versus less. It's about the kind of regulation we need."

Huhne said he had led a move to simplify regulation when he was an MEP, acknowledged "bad regulation" needed to be dealt with and pointed to examples of deregulatory policies he had brought in in the energy department, but he said these were examples of "smarter regulation".