"Instead of being dependent on a particular energy source or fuel that is extracted and refined in some distant part of the world, we can essentially 'democratise' energy services by tapping into the solar, wind, geothermal, biomass or hydroelectric energy that nearly every community and every nation can access," US Acting Under Secretary of Energy David Garman said here.

Referring to the 2002 declaration at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, Garman said "[We] reiterate the need for all countries to diversify their energy supplies, including expanding the use of renewable energy."

Garman was speaking at a conference on renewable energies where his country -- the world's most profligate user of energy and chronically dependent on oil imports -- is a whipping boy of green groups.

In contrast to European delegates who favoured a regulated approach to encouraging renewable energies, Garman insisted on the market.

He admitted the world had "finite" fossil fuels, and a "finite capacity" to absorb the carbon pollution blamed for global warming.

But "lowering the cost of renewable energy is the real key to our success," Garman said.

He pointed to five measures that the United States was submitting for a so-called action plan due to be endorsed by the conference on Friday.

Four of them will channel money to US scientists in the hope of making technological gains in solar panels, biofuels, wind and geothermal power, while the fifth would, if approved by Congress, extend a Clinton-era tax break for wind energy.

He also noted President W. Bush's declared support for hydrogen as a future fuel, as well as measures by individual US states that require renewable resources to account, as in Europe, for a specific share of electricity output.

Garman's proposals for the action plan drew withering scorn from environmentalists.

"It's all recycled stuff, as far as I can see," Steve Sawyer, Greenpeace's political director, said.

Jennifer Morgan, director of the WWF's climate change programme, said, "From what I know, it appears to be repacked material, tied up with a nice bow, for a big international audience."

European Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom was more diplomatic, saying that America was "doing some very good things" on renewables, but the promising work was happening at state level, not in the federal government.

"The expectations [with regard to Washington] are not so big, we did not expect them to do something," she said.

The four-day Bonn conference has drawn 3,000 ministers, corporate executives, energy users and activists, making it the biggest-ever forum for renewable energies since these sources came to the fore three decades ago in the first oil crisis.

Ecologists believe that the latest tensions in the oil market, coupled to the cost of the Iraqi war and surging demand in Asia, have provided the best political chance in a generation to wean countries off their dependence on oil.

SPACE.WIRE