CAMBRIDGE, March 10: The United States needs to develop a national climate change policy, but also recognise that coal and other fossil fuels will remain an important energy source for decades, the chairman and chief executive of General Electric Co. said on Saturday.

Setting a blanket national policy would make it easier for companies to adapt than allowing a patchwork of state laws, Jeff Immelt said at a conference on the future of energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, outside Boston.

"If we get 50 different energy policies in the United States, you never achieve enough scale to be good at anything," Immelt said.

Immelt said one risk governments must avoid in developing energy policy is focusing on technologies to phase out – such as coal -- without considering how they will be replaced.—Reuters