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It will take more than energy conservation and an increased reliance on renewable resources to ensure the rest of the country doesn’t repeat California’s power crisis, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Thursday. 

The nation needs to expand and improve its electricity transmission system to make sure power can get where it needs to go, unimpaired by political and geographical borders, Abraham said. 

“It’s not just enough to just have an adequate supply. It has to be reliable,” Abraham told a crowd of local business leaders at the Bay Area Council’s annual dinner. 

Although rolling blackouts had affected nearly all of the California businesses and cities represented in the packed ballroom, Abraham spent only a few minutes speaking directly to the state’s power woes. 

Abraham said that the state’s energy crisis could not be solved with increased conservation and energy efficiency alone, echoing statements from other Bush administration officials. 

“If you don’t have enough energy supply you face the threat of blackouts,” Abraham said. 

Abraham urged the technology industry to focus on creating ways to move power more efficiently.  

He also said U.S. businesses and residents would need to find new ways of creating methods to produce their own power and reduce their reliance on the grid. 

Abraham arrived in San Francisco after telling a crowd of Hispanic community advocates in Milwaukee that the Bush administration saw partnerships with neighboring countries, including Mexico, as essential to developing untapped energy sources. 

Abraham’s speeches around the country coincide with a House Republican effort to approve broad-ranging energy legislation before the end of the month when Congress leaves for its summer recess. 

The GOP’s energy package would offer billions of dollars in tax breaks and favors for the coal, oil and nuclear industries as well as conservation incentives.  

That plan is similar and in some cases exceeds the energy blueprint outlined by President Bush two months ago. 

The package of legislation includes drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge; incentives for technology to allow continued use of coal for power production; and tax breaks for high-mileage hybrid gas-electric automobiles. 

It exceeds the Bush plan in a provision that gives some of the largest, most profitable oil companies a waiver on having to pay the government royalties on oil and gas taken from new lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico. Bush opposed the royalty waiver, which critics claim amounts to a $7.3 million windfall to the oil companies. 

Vice President Dick Cheney is also visiting cities around the country promoting the Bush energy plan, fearing it is losing steam as gas prices and other energy costs continue to slide. 

Both the Bush plan and the House’s energy package have been criticized by environmental groups as being too soft on expanding energy efficiency and conservation programs and too easy on extending tax breaks to energy companies. 

Some of the criticisms stem from Cheney’s refusal to identify all the industry leaders who met with the energy task forced chaired by the vice president which developed the Bush energy policy.