Senator Lisa Murkowski, citing a need for policies to deal with abundant energy supplies after years of scarcity, offered proposals that include expanding oil and gas development to help underwrite clean-energy research.

“What we are trying to establish here is a new direction,” Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said today at a news conference in Washington. “We want to change the conversation.”

Murkowski’s Republican colleagues, such as Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, have said human-activities such as the burning of coal to generate electricity aren’t responsible for global warming.