TETON VILLAGE - Wyoming is a prime geographical and political location to lead the way toward balancing energy needs with actions to address climate change, several climate and energy experts agreed at a symposium.

Rather than call for the immediate mothballing of coal-fired power plants, rather than jockey one energy resource ahead of another energy resource, industry and state leadership here seem to understand that all energy resources must be part of the energy mix.

Most also agreed with Gov. Dave Freudenthal's message that the motivation to progress to the technologies that reduce carbon emissions, and sequester carbon, must come in the form of incentives and financial rewards, not heavy-handed restrictions that dictate specific technologies.

So far, the federal government is reluctant to fund the research and development and incentives needed to push the industry across that technology bridge to the future.

"Wyoming needs not feel hunkered down and isolated, but partner with other states and industry," said Stephen Schneider, University of Columbia professor and lead author in Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Schneider said it doesn't matter whether a Republican or a Democrat is elected president in 2008. The next administration will have to address the need for some type of carbon reduction policy.

"The U.S. can't deal with this problem without dealing with Wyoming," Schneider told the Star-Tribune.

Schneider was among several speakers at the University of Wyoming's "Finding the Balance: Energy and Climate," forum on Tuesday. The forum began Monday evening and wraps up this afternoon.

While Schneider and other climate experts found some common ground with oil and coal industry leaders on national policy issues, there was skepticism of the urgency to address climate change.

Michael Economides, professor of chemical and bio-molecular engineering at the University of Houston, said he doesn't believe the world has experienced peak oil.

"There is no such thing as peak as long as we keep discovering these fields and we keep developing technologies," Economides said.

Fred Palmer, senior vice president of public relations for coal giant Peabody Energy, gave a lengthy sales pitch about coal's advantages over natural gas. Palmer also suggested that cleaner energy technologies are too expensive right now, but might be brought into commercialization with the help of tax incentives and federal research dollars.

"Energy is like food and air and water," Palmer told an audience of more than 200 attendees. "The governor car-pooled here. I didn't car-pool. I'm going home on a jet tomorrow night and I don't feel bad about that."

Palmer continued, "People use fossil fuels because the good Lord put them on earth for us to use."

Ralph Cavanagh, senior attorney and co-director of the Natural Resource Defense Council's energy program, said Palmer's coal industry deserves the kind of market certainty that a national carbon constraint policy would provide. Once the carbon policy is in place, then uranium, coal, natural gas, wind, solar and all other energy industries can compete in a free market to meet those performance standards.

Cavanagh said the U.S. electric utility industry spends less than 1 percent of its revenue on energy efficiency research because there's no earnings opportunity for their efficiency efforts.

"We could create a performance-based earnings opportunity," Cavanagh said.

Palmer said the coal industry does not support a straight carbon cap policy, and said there must be incentives to reduce carbon emissions. Other experts had already agreed that a carbon cap and trade system would raise the price of Powder River Basin coal because of its relatively higher carbon content relative to other U.S. coals.

"You may not like the CO2," Palmer defensively told the audience, "but you sure as hell like the electricity."

Energy reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 577-6069 or dustin.bleizeffer@casperstartribune.net.