The future of Scottish renewables will underpin the Scottish National party’s Holyrood election campaign, the party leader, John Swinney, has said, as he claimed independence could cut household energy bills by a third in the long term.

At what was billed as the first campaign event before next May’s elections to the Scottish parliament, Swinney declared: “It’s Scotland’s energy” – mirroring the famous 1970s slogan “It’s Scotland’s oil”, which bolstered the SNP’s first Westminster breakthrough.

Contrasting how the UK and Norway managed their oil wealth, the campaign argues that “Westminster handed control of our oil to private companies and funnelled the profits south”, while Norway “kept their oil in public hands, built a national energy company and invested the profits for the long term”.

In his speech, Swinney told supporters: “Just like oil and renewables-rich Norway, Scotland has been blessed twice. We may have missed out on the full benefit of our oil and gas bonanza, but with our vast, low-cost renewable energy resource, Scotland has a second chance to get it right”.

He also warned the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, that “if he does not change course on the energy profits levy, he will enter our national story as a second Thatcher”.

The charge, imposed by the previous Conservative government at Westminster and continued by Labour, is “sucking the economic life out of one of our country’s most dynamic and important industries”, the first minister said.

This was later criticised by climate campaigners, who said it was “deeply worrying” to hear him advocate for oil companies.

The Friends of the Earth Scotland oil and gas campaigns manager, Rosie Hampton, added: “The success of the Norwegian model is largely based on state ownership but the SNP were happy to sell off ScotWind leases for a pittance and have presided over an approach to energy dictated by lobbyists and favouring big business above everyone else.”

Swinney was light on detail of how independence could be secured even if the SNP wins a majority in May, while the UK Labour government remains opposed to another referendum.

Asked whether voters would prefer to see him focusing on their key priorities or public services, Swinney insisted there was progress on NHS waiting times for operations, education and investment in affordable housing. But he added: “Part of my challenge is that people have to see that the way to future prosperity is through independence. That’s the argument I will put to people in May.”

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Responding to the launch, the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, said Swinney “wants to talk about anything but his record, and anything but the big challenges facing people across Scotland”.

With five months until Scots head to the polls, Scottish Labour held their own launch on Monday, promoting an independent investigation into NHS Scotland by Mike McKirdy, a retired consultant surgeon and the former president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

Sarwar said: “This landmark report shows the SNP’s utter failure to recover from the impact of the pandemic is because of their inability to modernise our NHS for the future. Enough is enough – we don’t need more undelivered strategies, we need bold and meaningful change to fix our NHS and to tackle the waiting list crisis.”