howard to follow bush

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21074083-663,00.html

US President George W. Bush's annual speech to Congress next week is likely to call for a huge increase in ethanol usage and tweak climate change policy while stopping short of mandatory emissions caps.

Mr Bush's annual State of the Union address is expected to touch on key energy policy points, after he made the surprise pronouncement during last year's address that the US was addicted to Middle East crude oil supplies.

A rising focus on "energy security" by both the Bush administration and Congress has added momentum to efforts to employ home-grown fuel sources like ethanol to reduce US dependency on oil imports.

Following that theme, Mr Bush is likely to call for more US use of home-grown ethanol, sources familiar with White House plans said today on condition of anonymity.

Iowa - which grows more corn than other US state - is also a key stop for candidates in the upcoming 2008 presidential elections.

One source briefed by White House officials said Mr Bush's speech on January 23 could call for more than 227 billion litres a year of ethanol to be mixed into petrol supplies by 2030.

That would be a huge increase from the 28.4 billion litres of ethanol use by 2012 required by current US law.

"I think it's going to be a big number," the source said on condition of anonymity. "It's in the ballpark of even above 60 billion (gallons) by 2030."

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the details of the speech.

The White House today confirmed Mr Bush's speech would outline a policy on global warming, but said Mr Bush had not dropped his opposition to mandatory limits on heat-trapping greenhouse-gas emissions.

Some industry officials and media reports speculated that Mr Bush would agree to mandatory emissions caps in an effort to combat global warming, reversing years of opposition to mandatory caps. But the White House denied this.

"If you're talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of industry-wide and nationwide, we knocked that down. That's not something we're talking about," White House spokesman Tony Snow said at today's media briefing.

Britain's The Observer newspaper reported on Sunday that senior Downing Street officials, who were not named, said Mr Bush was preparing to issue a changed climate policy during the speech.

US allies such as Britain and Germany have pressed for a new global agreement on climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

Mr Bush withdrew the US from the protocol in 2001, saying its targets for reducing carbon emissions would unfairly hurt the US economy.

Australia has taken the same tack for the same reasons.

The speech is a moving target and White House officials are known to make last-minute tweaks.
Last year, White House political advisers added the "addicted to oil" remarks only hours before Mr Bush spoke.