The keynote speakers at the Great Plains Energy Expo in Bismarck on Tuesday offered competing, but complementary, views on their hopes for American energy independence.

Dan Reicher, Google's director of climate change and energy initiatives, pushed for more green technology and renewable fuels.

Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said the United States must continue to search and drill for the oil and natural gas beneath it. Both agreed that Congress needs to do more to change U.S. energy policy.

Reicher said the Internet search-engine giant has put forward about $2 billion to invest into clean energy technology and development.

"We're at a crossroads in this country," said Reicher, who also worked for the Department of Energy under President Clinton. "Putting our energy situation in better shape can be so difficult in addressing the problems we have."

Gerard agreed that development of alternative energy sources is needed, but urged Congress to permanently lift all federal moratoriums on oil and natural gas drilling and to "resist the temptation to fall back on partisanship."

"If we fail to see energy as an economic issue we will have neither the energy we need nor the economy that we require," Gerard said.

Reicher said the challenge for the country is to invest into renewable energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal, as well as smarter power grids and cars. It's something he thinks could help solve the U.S. economic crisis by creating jobs.

With cheap fuel sources like coal, which makes up about half of the United States energy production, Congress needs to give investors tax and other policy incentives to develop so-called green technologies such as wind and solar, Reicher said.

Renewable fuels amount to about 3 percent of U.S. energy production, he said.

The country also needs to research and exploit other energy technologies, including plug-in hybrid cars and "enhanced geothermal" energy.

Unlike conventional geothermal energy, where pools of heated water beneath the ground are extracted, enhanced geothermal is where holes are drilled into the Earth and water is pumped into the hole, then heated by the Earth's temperature and pumped out as steam to generate electricity, Reicher said.

"This is a very promising technology," he said.

Gerard said it was appropriate that the energy expo is in Bismarck, near the Bakken oil field that has an estimated 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil, according to the United States Geologic Survey.

He called North Dakota a "bridge" to the country's energy future, noting the state's oil as well as wind energy potential.

Gerard said the oil and natural gas industry helps employ nearly 6 million Americans while investing more than $1 trillion since 1996 in long-term energy initiatives.

Gerard said the recent move by Congress to lift bans on offshore drilling show that opinions in America toward oil exploration is changing.

"People want change in our energy approach," he said.

(Reach reporter Brian Duggan at 223-8482 or brian.duggan@;bismarcktribune.com.)