EVADA, Iowa, May 17 — President Bush began an intensive effort today to sell his plan for developing new sources of energy to Congress and the American people, arguing that the country had a future of "energy abundance" if it could break free of the traditional antagonism between energy producers and environmental advocates.

Mr. Bush's plea for a new dialogue came as his administration published the report of an energy task force containing scores of specific proposals — many that he can impose by executive order — for finding new sources of power and encouraging a range of new energy technologies.

His critics swarmed over the specifics, noting that the plan set no targets for improved energy efficiency, offered no short-term relief for out-of-control electricity prices in the West and provided only modest financing for research into clean energy technology.

The president appeared at a highly efficient heating and cooling plant near St. Paul that burns a variety of fuels, including oil, coal and waste wood, to sound a theme he plans to repeat day after day. The parties in the energy debate have "yelled at each other enough," Mr. Bush said. "Now it's time to listen to each other."

"Too often Americans are asked to take sides between energy production and environmental protection," Mr. Bush added, before flying here, to a farming town north of Des Moines, to continue his argument at a small biomass plant that makes power by burning materials derived from animal waste and plants. "As if people who revere the Alaskan wilderness do not also care about America's energy future; as if the people who produce America's energy do not care about the planet their children will inherit."

Mr. Bush appeared to be weaving a careful political thread, arguing that if America failed to act now, "this great country could face a darker future, a future that is, unfortunately, being previewed in rising prices at the gas pump and rolling blackouts in the great state of California."

Mr. Bush also said rising energy prices had put an intolerable burden on families and farmers. But some of the statistics in his own report seemed to undercut that claim. One chart showed that the share of disposable household income spent on energy had declined to less than 5 percent today from 8 percent during the early days of the Reagan administration. (That percentage has begun to rise again, but only to the levels of the mid-1990's, before a sharp drop in energy prices.)

Mr. Bush talked not only of blackouts but of blackmail, raising the specter of a future in which the United States is increasingly vulnerable to foreign oil suppliers. He argued, for example, that the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, which he wants to open to drilling, can produce 600,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 47 years. "That happens to be exactly the amount the United States now imports from Iraq," he said.

Opening the Alaskan refuge to drilling is just one source of contention with Democrats and some moderate Republicans, many of whom argue that the Bush administration has put undue emphasis on increasing supplies of fossil fuels at the expense of the environment.

Critics say that although the report seems designed to suggest a balanced approach, it minimizes the potential role of alternative sources of energy and the possibility of reducing future demand through efficiency and conservation.

"America must embrace the promise offered by new technologies," said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut. "The energy crisis is not an excuse for creating an environmental crisis."

Republicans offered far more support for the president. Senator Frank H. Murkowski of Alaska, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, said he planned hearings next week to begin consideration of 25 recommendations in the Bush report that require legislative action.

"Not everyone is going to like this plan," Mr. Murkowski said, "but at least now we have a plan to kick around."

He said the previous administration had failed to grapple with the nation's energy sources through a comprehensive plan. Clinton administration officials disputed the assertion and blamed Congress for failing to enact energy legislation.

Yet even Mr. Murkowski sounded a note of caution about Mr. Bush's approach. He said the report offered few immediate remedies for California's electricity crisis or for rising gasoline prices. He said Republicans might have to consider a gas-tax rollback or the temporary suspension of some environmental provisions to address supply bottlenecks.

Mr. Bush was praised by many groups for laying out a long-term energy policy. His report contained 105 initiatives — although many of them are endorsements of actions already in place. And while in his public comments he always started with talk of conservation, the report itself was much more specific when it came to tapping new supplies.

"No matter how much we conserve, we're still going to need more energy," he said here this afternoon. "The State of California is the second best state at conservation, and yet they are still running out of energy."

Among those who took a different view was former president Jimmy Carter, who wrote in The Washington Post this morning that the United States did not confront an energy crisis comparable to those of 1973 and 1979.

"World supplies are adequate and reasonably stable, price fluctuations are cyclical, reserves are plentiful," he argued. Mr. Carter said "exaggerated claims seem designed to promote some long-frustrated ambitions of the oil industry at the expense of environmental quality."

Some chapters of the energy plan resemble the annual reports issued by energy companies, with color photos of bears living happily in the wilderness, forests that can absorb carbon dioxide and fly-fishermen wading in pristine water, practicing the favorite sport of the report's main author, Vice President Dick Cheney.

While the report clinically assessed all the available sources of energy and promised to encourage development of those that do the least environmental damage, it fell far short of describing the moon-shot approach to efficiency and renewable energy that was an ambition of the Carter years.

In fact, federal spending on research and development of wind, solar, geothermal and biomass energy sources, as well as on energy efficiency technology, has never equaled the $3 billion spent in 1980, Mr. Carter's final year in office, even after adjustments for inflation.

If the Bush plan were fully put into effect, it would potentially double what the administration had planned to spend over 10 years for renewable energy research and for tax incentives for people and companies that purchase energy-efficient products, like hybrid cars.

But the estimated $10 billion commitment over that period is below what the Clinton administration had projected spending for roughly the same period, and well below what energy experts say would be required to make some cutting-edge energy technologies commonplace.

"Americans spend $600 billion a year on energy," said John Holdren, an energy and environmental policy expert at Harvard who helped draft a Clinton administration study of clean energy sources. "The Bush people are proposing to change habits by incentives that amount to about one-tenth of one percent of that amount each year. It's not very significant."

Though the report devotes more chapters and more recommendations to measures related to the environment, conservation and renewable energy than those related to traditional sources the impact of what the administration intends to do to increase traditional energy supplies greatly outweighs what it aspires to do to diminish demand.

The report notes that efficiency in homes and offices could help reduce the need for new power plants, which it says must total at least 1,300 by 2020. But it adopts no goal for such improvements.

In the same manner, addressing auto efficiency standards, the report reviews how Corporate Average Fuel Economy mandates improved the performance of combustion engines in the 1980's. But it puts off any decision on whether to raise those standards now, saying the administration would wait for a study to be completed.

The report is far less tentative in the area regulations it identifies as hindering the oil, gas, nuclear and utility industries.

It mentions about a dozen areas — including land-use restrictions in the Rockies, lease stipulations on offshore areas attractive to oil companies, the vetting of locations for nuclear plants, environmental reviews to upgrade power plants and refineries — that could be streamlined or eliminated to help industry find more oil and gas and produce more electricity and gasoline.

California, where soaring electricity prices and rolling blackouts have been the main contributor to the idea that the nation faces on energy crisis, gets little in the Bush plan. The report notes that federal agencies have been asked to reduce peak power use in California in coming months, but that is far less than California officials want.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, called the plan "a bible for long-term energy production and not even a pamphlet for the urgent short-term actions needed to help us get out of the crisis" in her home state. She particularly criticized Mr. Bush's refusal to call for electricity price caps in California.

In what seems likely to be one of its most contested recommendations, the Bush team recommends creating a national electricity grid, akin to the interstate highway system, and giving federal agencies the right to take land for electricity transmission by eminent domain. That proposal has already come under attack by Western governors and is sure to be a battle in Congress.