In his State of the Union address tomorrow, Pres. Bush is likely to promote fuel efficient vehicles, ethanol, and new technologies as a way to address global warming and reduce the country’s dependence on oil, officials said Friday.

 
White House aides have maintained that energy will be one of the central themes in the annual address before Congress, along with the Iraq war, health care, immigration and education issues.

 
White House spokesman Tony Snow said that "this president believes deeply in the importance of trying to innovate our way out of a situation where we’ve been dependent on an oil source that can render us insecure."

An analyst at brokerage firm Friedman Billings Ramsey said he believes the Bush administration has been increasingly accepting the relationship between hydrocarbon combustion and climate change. But any shift in climate-change policy will continue to be gradual, said the analyst, Kevin Book.

 
Book said he expects biofuels to be one of Bush’s points of emphasis because it represents a “sweet spot” in his goal to address economic and national security. Biofuels is also an issue that “sits comfortably among party lines.”  Congress is already poised to advance a farm bill this year that will place a huge focus on renewable fuels.

 
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill argue that increased use of ethanol will reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil, but ethanol industry officials have made clear that those higher standards can’t be met from corn-based ethanol alone.  Cellulosic plants are extremely costly and Bush is likely to continue his push for research-and-development funding to find ways to bring the costs down.

Bush is also expected to address vehicle fuel efficiency, which would come on the heels of a new proposal unveiled by U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, who recently proposed raising fuel economy standards from the current 27 miles a gallon to 40 miles a gallon by 2017.
 
 

“The president must signal a commitment...to real energy solutions that address global warming and put us on a new energy path,” said Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke. “We’re looking for a cap and trade program for global warming pollution.”