The Obama campaign has accused Republican challenger Mitt Romney of repeated dishonesty during Wednesday’s presidential debate, which has been widely hailed as a victory for the GOP candidate.

Accusing Romney of a performance which “was devoid of honesty” and not “rooted in fact”, senior Democrats highlighted how Romney denied the existence of his well-established plans to push through $5tr of tax cuts.

They also said he used discredited figures to suggest half of the clean tech companies supported through President Obama’s loan guarantee programme had failed.

Green campaigners responded angrily to Romney’s accusation, arguing that despite the high profile collapse of government-backed solar company Solyndra, official figures show that the failure rate for recipients of clean energy loan guarantees stood at 1.4 per cent at the end of 2011.

The Romney campaign subsequently admitted its candidate had got the figures wrong, but green groups remain furious at the use of misinformation about the success of the government’s programme.

Romney repeatedly attacked Obama’s clean energy programmes during the debate, arguing that while he supported clean energy he wanted to expand oil and gas exploration, build the Keystone XL pipeline, and improve the investment climate for the coal industry, stating unequivocally: “I like coal”.

He also suggested that the $90bn of support the Obama administration has provided to clean energy dwarfs that on offer for fossil fuels – a fact fiercely contested by clean tech companies, which cite huge historic subsidies handed to carbon intensive sectors.

However, in comments that are likely to be welcomed by green groups, Romney suggested that he could emulate President Obama’s plan to phase out subsidies for oil and gas companies.

Responding to Obama’s pledge to tackle multi-billion dollar tax breaks for oil companies, Romney said scrapping the tax breaks would also be on the table as part of his plan to cut overall corporate tax rates from 35 per cent to 25 per cent.

“[Oil industry tax breaks are] probably not going to survive to get that rate down to 25 per cent,” he said.