BOSTON (AP) – New England’s economic prosperity is at risk if the region does not step up efforts to build new electrical generating plants, but much more aggressive energy conservation is needed as well, a regional conference on energy policy was told Friday.

“What’s missing in the region and missing in the country is leadership,” said Paul Joskow, an economics and management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in energy. “Without the leadership of our elected officials we’re never going to resolve this log jam.”

Joskow was a panelist at the session hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s newly created New England Public Policy Center. The conference drew regulators, legislators, utility executives and alternative energy advocates from around the region.

Concerns about the difficulty of finding sites for new facilities came against the backdrop of ongoing debate over a wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound and a liquefied natural gas terminal proposed for Fall River.

Henry Lee, director of the environment and natural resources program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, joined others in arguing that public officials have given too much weight to local opposition and not enough to the region-wide benefits of the new facilities.

“This there should never be a loser’ concept is not going to work if we are ever going to get these facilities sited,” Lee said.

Some speakers warned that worries about electricity demand outstripping supply this winter may be a preview of coming distractions if aggressive action isn’t taken now to plan and build new generating plants.

“Without the assurance of an energy system that can meet immediate demands along with long-term growth, the region puts its economic prosperity at risk,” said Carrie Conaway, the New England Public Policy Center’s deputy director.

Conaway was among those saying a better balance needs to be struck between local concerns and regional interests when locating sites for power plants. But she said in an interview that it would be up to legislators in the region’s six states to determine how to do that.

There was agreement among speakers who addressed the issue that retail electric competition has not worked for most residential and small-business customers, but disagreement about whether it should be fixed or scrapped.

And there was a complaint from Nickolas Stavropoulos, president of the KeySpan Energy Delivery natural gas company, that worries about this winter’s electric grid reliability are unfairly being blamed on problems in the gas industry.

Stavropoulos said power companies’ potential difficulty getting gas to fuel power plants stems the fact that they’ve opted for lower-cost “interruptible contracts” under which gas supplies can be cut off if a cold snap creates a demand spike and demand for gas as a heating fuel jumps. In an interview, he likened the situation to someone buying a discount, standby airline ticket and being told they’re out of luck when the plane is full.

Richard Cowart, former chairman of Vermont’s Public Service Board, who is now director of the consulting group Regulatory Assistance Project, argued that the region can’t respond to its energy needs merely by increasing demand and consumption of electricity and other forms of energy.

Instead, Cowart said, the region should push much harder on energy efficiency, saying that spending on efficiency measures costs about 3 cents per kilowatt-hour saved, while the wholesale cost of power has climbed above twice that.

Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres Inc., an energy consulting group, said business leaders and investors are paying close attention to the issue of global climate change, and trying to discern how it, or changes made in response to it, might affect their bottom lines.

“This issue impacts every business, every sector of the economy,” Lubber said. She added that New England needs to mark a new trail into its energy future soon, so that businesses that might want to invest in the region will know what the regulatory environment will be like. “We can’t operate in a world of uncertainty too much longer,” she said.