LOWELL, Mass. (AP) – Gov.-elect Deval Patrick on Saturday said environmentally sound business practices will lead to higher profits for state businesses as he repeated his campaign pledge to rejoin a regional program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Gov. Mitt Romney opted out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative last year, saying it could drive up energy costs for consumers.

But Patrick, speaking to 1,000 people at the Climate Change Forum at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, said he was committed to the initiative, which gives businesses financial incentives to adopt policies which reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

“We can be green and wealthy too. That’s all right,” Patrick said at the forum, which was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Marty Meehan.

Seven regional states, including New York and Connecticut, are already part of the initiative.

Paul Roeder, 56, of Concord, an environmental science teacher, said he gave up a Saturday to attend the forum because he wanted to know Patrick’s plans for the initiative.

“I know what the activists say – ‘I’m willing to spend a little money to put photovoltaic cells on my roof’ – but I’m interested in what politicians say,” he said.

Patrick said that the initiative could spur businesses to develop new environmentally-sound technologies that will be in high demand.

“If we get this right, the whole world will be our customer,” said Patrick, who worked for Texaco in the late 1990s.

Meehan said he was also a strong supporter of the regional initiative, but that a federal regulation system that gives tax breaks to companies that reduce carbon dioxide emissions and funds more basic research would be more effective.

“Unfortunately, there are many climate change skeptics in Washington,” he said. “This is the most disturbing aspect of global warming, the inaction and head-in-the-sand policies of so many politicians in Washington.”

Meehan credited former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” with motivating him to hold the forum. He showed a short video Gore prepared for it in which Gore implored those in attendance to “make the will to act a renewable resource.”

Lee Ketelsen, the New England director of Clean Water Action, a member of an expert panel that took questions from the audience, said the marketing of reusable and renewable energy sources had to change.

She asked audience members to raise their hands if they ate broccoli, and if they ate it because it was good for them. Almost everyone raised their hands for both questions.

Then she asked how many people ate chocolate. Hands shot up, but the crowd just laughed when she asked if they ate it because studies showed it, too, could be healthy.

Ketelsen then said environmental advocates must make environmentally responsible living desirable. “Don’t pitch broccoli,” she said. “Pitch chocolate.”