Representatives for the oil, coal, nuclear and natural-gas industries try to present a united front on Capitol Hill based on the philosophy that, when it comes to energy, the nation needs more of everything.

Now a new group created to promote one particular fuel source is straining the truce and even trying to strike up a new alliance with the common enemy: environmental groups.

Its CEO describes it as more think tank than trade association. But while the foundation won’t lobby Congress, it has launched an extensive advertising campaign that has already caused some heartburn among coal supporters, who worry the promotion of natural gas will come at coal’s expense.

Tapped to run the foundation is Denise Bode, a native of Oklahoma but also a familiar face in Washington. She has spent nearly two decades here, after first moving with her husband, John, in 1979 to work for then-Sen. David Boren (D-Okla.), for whom she had worked when he was Oklahoma’s governor.

Bode was one of the few female staff tax aides on the Senate Finance Committee during the tax-cutting heyday of the 1980s. She also helped her boss with energy issues.

After six years, Bode left the Hill with a law degree from George Mason University and a master’s of law in taxation from Georgetown to help start a public policy firm, Gold and Liebengood. “I was the tax nerd,” she says.

Bode then took over as the first female president in the 80-year history of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), a national trade group that represents 8,000 oil and natural-gas producers.

In 1997, Bode and her husband moved back to Oklahoma, where Bode was elected to serve as a commissioner on the state panel that regulates public utilities. A Democrat-turned-Republican, she ran for Congress in 2006 but was defeated by eventual winner Mary Fallin in the GOP primary.  

Pleasant and gregarious, Bode tends to talk through a smile and in 20-minute increments.

But her message in one ad (published in this newspaper and written as an editorial) rubbed the coal industry the wrong way. In it, Bode praised the Energy Department for canceling FutureGen, a controversial public-private effort to build a non-emitting coal plant.

In a critical written response, National Mining Association President and CEO Kraig Naasz called Bode’s arguments “highly objectionable” and “unfortunate.” He also warned: “You should expect coal producers and our congressional allies to make every effort to correct the record that is being distorted.”

In a statement to The Hill, Naasz added: “With the demand for electricity expected to increase by 40 percent over the next two decades, we will need coal, nuclear, renewables and natural gas. Pitting one domestic fuel against another is not the answer.”

Bode blogged her own response, and posted Naasz’s letter, on the foundation’s website, www.cleanskies.org . Quoting parts of Naasz’s letter, she wrote that, “neither I, nor American Clean Skies Foundation, is party to an ‘understanding’ that is ‘tacitly shared’ among ‘competing fuel producers.’ ”

Bode says she didn’t mean to offend anyone, but that as a former state official, she appreciates efforts to reduce government spending.

The ad cut close to the bone for the coal industry, which stands to lose out if a congressional cap on carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, rearranges the nation’s fuel mix. Coal now provides just over 50 percent of the electricity in the United States. With an estimated 200-year supply, coal will have to continue to play a role in power generation for the foreseeable future, experts say.

But coal emits over 40 percent more carbon dioxide than does natural gas. It also releases pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury into the air.

If coal’s backers seem sensitive, however, there’s reason beyond the debate over climate change.

The foundation is underwritten by Chesapeake Energy Corp ., a natural gas company that has worked to block construction of coal-fired power plants in Texas and Kansas. Before it started the foundation, Chesapeake also underwrote an ad campaign in Washington that included the slogan, “Face It. Coal is Filthy.”

That brought rebuke from coal-state lawmakers and strained the truce among energy providers. Natural-gas groups backed away from the campaign, and have nervously watched the creation of the foundation ever since.

“We don’t want to get into a silly tit-for-tat,” one lobbyist for a natural gas group said.

Bode says her group will “move the ball forward without being negative,” and that it won’t disparage coal by using adjectives like “bad” or “dirty.”

Still, it won’t shy away from differences, either.

“How do you tell somebody something is clean without explaining what it is cleaner than?” she says.   

An apparent willingness to push the limits of the energy truce is just one way in which Bode and her group are operating outside Washington protocol.

Bode is also working to forge friendships with groups that typically attack energy producers. For instance, she has reached out to the Sierra Club , the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the American Lung Association .

Bode says the foundation’s “natural partners” are groups that support renewable energy and energy-efficiency programs — “not necessarily the partners of the past.”

“We have budding relationships that people in the energy business have never built before,” Bode says.

Dave Willett, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, said no formal arrangement yet exists between his group and the foundation, but acknowledged the two might have a “mutual target” in the coal industry.

Sierra Club’s support of natural gas is tacit at best. It says continued development of existing natural gas production facilities in an environmentally responsible manner is acceptable for the near term as the country transitions to even cleaner fuel sources.

That approach may be in line with Chesapeake’s business strategy. The company supports using new technologies to produce from areas in Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama and other mid-continent states where drilling has already occurred. That avoids the political controversy of trying to open up the sensitive areas, like the outer continental shelf or the Rocky Mountain region.

One area where the Clean Skies Foundation and environmental groups might link up is on the foundation’s online TV channel, clearskiestv.org , which launches on Earth Day, April 22. Bode said she is trying to convince groups like the NRDC to put content on their sites.

Run by former journalists from CNN and CBS, clearskiestv.org will operate 10 satellite bureaus, where local officials, energy executives and environmental advocates will be interviewed.

A new studio is being built in the foundation’s offices off Capitol Hill.

Bode said the channel will provide energy and environmental news “every hour on the hour” and will operate independently from the foundation. She says the programming will be “real journalism.”

“It is critically important to have an open and honest dialogue on energy and let the chips fall where they may.”

Of the foundation, Bode says: “What we are doing is a very different model.”