LARAMIE -- A "series of prejudices" by policy-makers at the national level may have limited research on western coals and hampered the development of a rational policy on energy, Gov. Dave Freudenthal said Wednesday in his keynote address at a hydrogen conference sponsored by the University of Wyoming's School of Energy Resources.

"There are groups who come in and say, 'We want some work done with regards to coal but we only want it to be on eastern coal because we are a United Mine Workers state,'" Freudenthal said.

In an interview following his speech, he said some representatives from eastern coal states in Congress get a lot of support from unionized mine workers.

"It's no accident the leading federal research center on coal is in Morgantown, W.Va.," Freudenthal said. The relatively-recent arrival of Powder River stripmined coal on the national scene is also a factor in that equation, he acknowledged.

In his speech, Freudenthal said hydrogen was a promising technology but urged the audience to not engage in "intramural battles" with other possible energy sources.

"We have an incredibly serious problem with regard to available energy," he said, and the nation and the world need diversity in energy sources to provide sufficient, appropriately-priced and environmentally-sound energy.

Increased support for one energy source should not mean a decrease for another, Freudenthal said. "We need them all."

He said ethanol has attracted so much federal money and support because of political reasons, not functional ones. The level of research in coal would be much higher, he said, "if the first presidential primary was in Wyoming, or in West Virginia."

Dependence on only one source of energy leads to insecurity internationally, Freudenthal warned.

"A diverse energy system helps reduce the ability of any particular controller of a key energy resource from exerting political influence by manipulation of resources, whether it's the Russians who reward friends and punish enemies with who gets their natural gas, or the Mideast with its oil," he said.

"The president has to go to the Mideast with hat in hand to ask for more oil. That's a horrible position for the United States to be in."

Energy is necessary for the development of cultures, he said. "For each unit of energy, you get a unit of a better life."

Carl Bauer of Pittsburgh, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory, said in an interview Wednesday afternoon that the governor may be correct about research funds if one looks only at the dollar amounts coming to Wyoming. But in terms of fostering systems to make coals usable, Bauer said, the research funds are split about evenly between Powder River Basin coal and eastern bituminous coal.

Bauer pointed to the research leading to the development of the Stamet Pump, a technology recently purchased by General Electric.

"That research didn't occur in Wyoming, but it will facilitate the use of Wyoming's coal in gasification," he said. Other research outside Wyoming has led to technologies to address the mercury and moisture components in Wyoming coal and make it more marketable, he said.

Hydrogen technology is important to Wyoming, Bauer said, because it can be an energy source derived from the gasification of coal and the sequestration of carbon. Because Wyoming has uranium deposits, the state could also benefit from the idea of using nuclear energy to hydrolize water, he said.

Wyoming is poised "to be a big player" in the development of carbon capture and sequestration processes as concern about greenhouse gases impacts the use of Powder River Basin coal, Bauer said. Continuing work by UW's Western Research Institute, combined with the creation of the School of Energy Resources, will attract research money to the state, he said.