Helping to meet that demand will be a rapid ramp up in natural gas production and use in the United States, Dyer told the University of Missouri-Kansas City's energy symposium last week which explored expanding business opportunities in energy. The event was held in Kansas City, Mo.

"This century will be the century of natural gas," Dyer said.

Identified natural gas reserves today equal, in energy, about 700 billion barrels of oil or three times the oil reserves of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, he said.

Picking up on a theme advanced by maverick oilman T. Boone Pickens, Dyer said that it would be wise to convert a segment of America's vehicular fleet to compressed natural gas. At current prices, it would cost roughly $7 to give a car the natural gas energy equivalent of 15 gallons of gasoline, Dyer said. The gasoline fill up, in comparison, would cost close to $45.

The country should immediately endorse Pickens' proposal that the federal government should by 2020 be totally reliant on domestic sources of energy, which would require expanded use of natural gas, Dyer said.

The Marcellus Shale, underlying a vast swath of the Northeast, is the richest deposit of natural gas that is now accessible through the latest innovation in drilling technology. Dyer said that the Marcellus formation is larger than all domestic shale plays combined. Gas developers have drilled 1,000 wells in the Marcellus area in the past three years. And the wells developed there are vastly more productive than many older natural gas wells, he said.

While natural gas is of rising importance in our energy economy, others speaking at the conference underscored the growing importance of development of more energy efficient technologies and renewables.

Stanley R. Bull, director of energy programs at the Midwest Research Institute, said that as much as 60 percent of the energy we use is lost through inefficiencies in generation of power and its transmission and distribution.

Making wind generation more efficient has cut is cost dramatically, Bull said. Since 1980, the cost of generating power from wind turbines has fallen by a factor of 10, he said. In comparison, solar generation has fallen by a factor of 5 and those gains must be doubled, Bull said.

Renewable use will climb in coming years, outpacing generation from fossil fuel burning plants, according to Ron Wood, former president and CEO, Black & Veatch Energy. A total of 93,000 megawatts of renewable capacity will be added by 2035, with about half coming from new wind projects. About 158,000 megawatts of new capacity will be added and 31 percent of that will be generating by burning coal, Wood said.

The increased role of renewables - and a possible path for continued reliance on coal - will be explored at the upcoming EnergyBiz Leadership Forum in Washington Feb. 28 - March 1.

Our reliance on coal will slip but remain significant - falling from 48 percent of our energy needs in 2008 to 43 percent in 2035, Wood said.

The conference, in its second year, was sponsored by the University of Missouri-Kansas City schools of business and public administration, engineering and law. It attracted representatives of Midwest utilities, energy law practices, investors, regulators and energy experts.

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