LANSING – While there has been a substantial increase in technological innovations on alternative energy, the efforts do not come anywhere near what will be needed to solve America and the world’s energy problems, U.S. governors were told Monday at the closing session of the 2008 National Governors Association meeting in Philadelphia.

Richard Lester, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also said the United States and the rest of the world had to accept a greater use of nuclear power and refined coal use or face potentially disastrous climatic conditions between 2020 to 2050.

The NGA’s centennial meeting focused on energy, the topic chosen by outgoing chair Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, but beyond calling for a continued federal tax credit for development of alternative energy sources such as wind and solar they did not issue any major policy statements or proposals on dealing with global warming or increased domestic production of oil.

As the meeting ended President George Bush lifted a federal executive order first implemented by his father that barred off-shore drilling on the continental shelf.

As part of the emphasis on energy during the weekend meeting (that Governor Jennifer Granholm attended) the governors also heard from Robert Malone, CEO of BP America Incorporated, who said that since the first major oil crisis of the 1970s (following the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East) the nation had faced the potential that it was now enduring in sky-high energy costs.

While production of alternative fuel had increased by 10 percent in 20 years, oil consumption has increased by 30 percent, Malone said.

Lester said the progress made in developing and using alternative, clean forms of energy was substantial with ambitious goals being set for future development and use of alternatives.

Even so, the efforts are far short of what efforts are needed to cure the national and international energy problems in the future, he said. And energy use and demand will increase as more and more people worldwide are lifted from poverty towards a level of middle class existence, he said.

Unless the United States faces the reality that it needs to make greater use of nuclear power and coal, it could see energy demand lead to catastrophic climatic changes from 2020 to 2050, Lester said.

But the United States cannot use coal as it does now, he said, but has to develop a strategy that will capture the carbon emitted and bury it.

The United States will have to solve the issue of storing nuclear waste before it can move ahead on greater use of nuclear power, he said. Plans to store waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been held up over political and environmental concerns, and Mr. Lester posed a number of options to deal with the storage problem should the Yucca Mountain facility not be resolved, including establishing several storage dryland storage sites across the nation.

Achieving these goals will take more than simple reliance on the marketplace, he said, but they cannot be divorced from market economics. A major problem that policymakers have to resolve deals with encouraging commercial testing and demonstration of new technologies, he said, if that step in the process is not improved and expanded it will help stifle technological development.

The federal government must lead on the big picture of energy development, and Lester said it had not lead to this point, but the states and local governments will play critical roles in helping educate consumers as well as encouraging use of alternative sources.

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