MONTPELIER, Vt. – A Maine environmental group says the Vermont governor’s suggestion that a new coal-fired power plant is needed in that state is “a bad idea” and represents “backward thinking.”

Gov. Howard Dean made the comment on Tuesday, saying Vermont needs the power source to meet the state’s growing energy demands.

“We need a new power plant in Vermont,” Dean said on the Mark Johnson Show on WKDR-AM in Burlington and WDEV-AM in Waterbury. “I frankly think it should be a coal-fired power plant. That’s going to be tremendously controversial, but we need to have one.”

In a later interview with The Associated Press, Dean gave mixed signals. He began by saying of his radio comments, “That was a throwaway. All I was trying to do was provoke debate.”

But he added moments later, “I think coal’s definitely on the table if you can find the technology to make it clean enough. … I don’t want to underplay the idea of a coal plant.”

Sue Jones, air project director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, said she was surprised Dean would say such a thing, since Vermont has some of the nation’s cleanest air.

“Out and out it’s a bad idea, it’s a bad precedent, bad for the environment and bad for public health,” Jones said.

She said many cleaner forms of power are readily available, including renewable energy, such as wind farms, and natural gas.

Dean said the best part of Vermont for a new power plant would be in northwestern Vermont, which has seen the most growth in demand recently and where the electric system is said to be straining to meet demand.

“A power plant in northwestern Vermont – you can throw Addison County into the mix as well – somewhere in there is the most sensible place to put one,” Dean said.

A coal plant in Vermont would appear to run counter to a “comprehensive energy plan and greenhouse gas action plan” issued by Dean’s Department of Public Service in 1998.

“Because a vast reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is necessary to mitigate the potential impacts of global warming, and because coal emits more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than any other fuel source, carbon dioxide emissions from coal must be reduced,” the department’s report said.

It added that “clean coal” technologies have proven unable to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal. Those technologies generate more solid waste. Sending waste to landfills “could result in harmful chemicals leaching into the groundwater,” the department said.

Dean’s comments drew a rebuke from one Vermont environmental group that has followed energy issues closely. “He ought to read his own energy plan,” Mark Sinclair of the Conservation Law Foundation said.

Richard Sedano, who was public service commissioner when it issued its energy plan, said it would surprise him if developers came forward to try to build a coal-fired power plant in Vermont.

“In my nine years as commissioner I don’t remember anybody coming to me and saying, ‘I’m a business person providing energy and I would like to build a coal plant in Vermont,”‘ Sedano said.

He added, “I think it’s good for the governor to start a conversation about our future energy needs in Vermont.”

The Maine environmental group’s Jones said a call for coal plants represents “backward thinking in this day and age.”

Dean said he believes strongly that Vermont needs to begin planning now to build new generating sources within its borders. He noted that the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant’s license expires in 2012, and that Vermont’s power import contract with Hydro-Quebec phases out in the latter half of that decade.

Most new power plant construction in New England in recent years has been fueled by natural gas. Dean said coal would be preferable because the region is becoming too reliant on an energy source that has seen major price spikes recently.

“We have a lot of gas and we have no coal. We need that,” he told the radio audience.

Later, he said in an interview, “The serious issue is not whether we’re going to have a coal plant,” he said. The real problem, he said, is that “there’s enormous resistance to siting generating capacity in Vermont and we need generating capacity.”