Renewable energy was top of mind Thursday at the Detroit Regional Chamber Mackinac Policy Conference.

In an era of skyrocketing petroleum prices, America needs to look more seriously than ever at conservation, renewable energy sources, expanding domestic oil drilling and nuclear power, panelists told a packed room in the Grand Pavilion of the Grand Hotel.

"This is a tsunami," Jim Croce, CEO of NextEnergy, the state of Michigan's energy industry accelerator, said. "The world economy is being transformed by a lack of fossil fuels and rising demand."

Donald Kepler, executive vice president and chief sustainabilty officer at Midland's Dow Chemical Co., said Dow alone uses more than 1 percent of all of the daily energy consumption in the United States, because its chemical manufacturing processes are highly energy-intensive.

He said the company Wednesday announced a 20 percent across-the-board price hike due to energy spending that has rocketed from $8 billion a year in 2000 to $32 billion a year today.

He said Dow is working on energy efficiency -- a 30 percent national efficiency gain, he said, would pretty much cover the need for imported oil. And he said the nation needs to get serious about building more zero-greenhouse-gas nuclear plants, find more sources of oil in the short term, and work on alternative energy for the long term.

Bob Buckler, president and COO at DTE Energy, repeated the mantra of better efficiency, renewable energy and nuclear energy as the path to a prosperous post-petroleum future. He said Michigan has two of the leading solar panel companies in the world in Hemlock Semiconductor, a Dow joint venture, and Energy Conversion Devices in Rochester Hills.

All three backed the current state law proposed for a Renewable Portfolio Standard, which would mandate Michigan get 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015, and guarantee existing utilities 90 percent of the state's electric market.

They also said Michigan has a real opportunity to create a new alternative energy industry out of university research and its existing manufacturing expertise.

Out on the Grand Hotel's expansive porch after the presentations, U.S. Sen Debbie Stabenow announced that the 2008 Food Energy and Conservation Act, better known as the Farm Bill, also contains serious incentives for renewable energy.

Included is $2 billion to develop "green collar" jobs, $250 million for advanced battery research (vs. $22 million last year), incentives for purchasing hybrid vehicles, $70 million for incentives to grow cellulosic energy crops along with a fuel tax credit for cellulosic ethanol, $320 million in loan guarantees for biofuel plants, $118 million for biomass energy research and more.

Croce pointed out that the U.S. government heavily subsidizes the oil and gas industry, and some of those tax incentives need to be transferred to renewables.

As Stabenow pointed out with understatement, the oil industry is "doing pretty well" these days.

Video of Croce and Stabenow is available at the WWJ Web site at this link.