That is something the "Big Three" US automakers have been lobbying for but which critics say will be hard to meet, with corn prices at 10-year highs and alternatives to corn ethanol years away.

The plan does call for the first major changes to US automotive fuel economy standards since the 1970s. But the cuts are relatively modest, at an average of four percent a year beginning in 2010 for cars and 2012 for trucks.

"This is a gift to Detroit," said Russell Long, vice president of the Bluewater Network, which lobbies for better fuel economy standards.

"If the president were serious he would call for a doubling of the nation's fuel economy standards," he said. "Instead he's squandering another tremendous opportunity to make substantial cuts in the nation's oil dependence."

Gasoline consumption would fall by three million barrels of oil a day if fuel economy standards were doubled, and this could easily be achieved within 10 years without sacrificing automobile safety or passenger comfort, Long said.

Joan Claybrook, president of consumer group Public Citizen, said that in any case, "ethanol is not widely available and even if (corn) farmers get more subsidies, they won't necessarily meet demand."

"Really what ought to happen is the Congress ought to mandate 40 mile per gallon (six liters per 100 kilometers) fuel economy within eight years -- that is very doable," she said.

But significant increases in fuel economy standards are simply not politically feasible, analysts said.

Detroit's automakers have long fought the "Corporate Average Fuel Economy" program.

CAFE requires carmakers to ensure that their passenger cars average no less than 27.5 miles per gallon, while their trucks -- including truck-based sport utility vehicles (SUVs) -- reach no less than 22.2 miles per gallon.

The federal program gives credits to automakers who beat the standard and imposes fines on those who exceed it.

Japanese automakers have accumulated massive credits because they have only recently begun offering full-sized trucks, and their vehicles have traditionally been smaller and more fuel-efficient than those of General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler.

GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz recently said that tightening CAFE standards "effectively hands the truck and SUV market over to the imports, particularly the Japanese."

He compared forcing automakers to sell smaller, more fuel-efficient cars to "fighting the nation's obesity problem by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell garments in only small sizes."

But David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, said the industry was complaining too much about stricter fuel efficiency.

"There will be pressure to increase fuel economy but they'll try to preserve the range of vehicles Americans want... I don't think we'll see dramatic changes in the shape of cars."

Americans are simply not willing to change their driving habits, Cole said, and it would be "dangerous territory" for politicians to do anything that would even hint at restrictions on vehicle size and power.

Applying pressure on the demand side is also unpalatable, said Bruce Harrison, auto analyst with Global Insight.

"Changing consumer behavior requires taxing fuel -- and there's no politician seeking re-election who's going to do that," he said.

earlier related report
Bush to push for 20 percent cut in US gasoline use
Washington (AFP) Jan 23 - President George W. Bush outlined Tuesday an ambitious plan to slash US gasoline usage by 20 percent as a means of breaking America's dependence on oil imported from hostile or restive regions.

In his annual State of the Union speech to Congress, Bush was to demand a halt to the growth in carbon dioxide emissions from cars, light trucks and sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) by 2017, Deputy Chief of Staff Joel Kaplan said.

"The president is going to propose a bold, ambitious, but achievable goal of reducing by 20 percent our gasoline usage by 2017," Kaplan told reporters in a briefing on the high-stakes political speech.

Bush was also to call for a doubling of America's emergency oil reserves as another key energy initiative in his speech, according to a fact sheet released by the White House.

"For too long, our nation has been dependent on oil," the fact sheet said, a year after Bush described America's reliance on foreign energy as an "addiction."

"America's dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes, and to terrorists who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments, raise the price of oil, and do great harm to our economy," the sheet read.

Bush has been accused by critics worldwide of neglecting climate change, and he now faces a Congress held by opposition Democrats for the first time since he took office in 2001.

Kaplan said the president was to ask for powers to launch the first major changes to US automotive fuel economy standards since the 1970s. The US standards now lag those of Europe, Japan and even China.

His plan would cut annual emissions from cars and light trucks by as much as 10 percent, about 175 tonnes, the equivalent of zeroing out the annual emissions of 26 million automobiles, the aide said.

Bush's prime-time televised address, set for 9:00 pm (0200 GMT Wednesday), came as his poll numbers were mired at all-time lows and US forces in Iraq faced some of the worst violence since the March 2003 invasion.

Energy issues are one area where the president feels he can work with the Democratic-led Congress, at a time when sales of SUVs have been dipping as smaller and more fuel-efficient cars regain favor with US drivers.

Bruce Harrison, an auto analyst with Global Insight, said reducing fuel consumption by 20 percent will require more use of alternative fuels and technologies, and improved fuel efficiency standards.

But getting Americans to stop driving massive gas-guzzling vehicles altogether is probably an unrealistic goal, he added.

"Changing consumer behavior requires taxing fuel -- and there's no politician seeking re-election who's going to do that."

Bush was to call for stepped-up production of alternative fuels like ethanol, which for the most part is derived from corn, to displace much of the projected annual gasoline use in 2017.

For a noted skeptic about global warming who abandoned the Kyoto protocol, the president has staged quite a turnaround on the energy debate, pressured by an unlikely coalition whose members demand policy action now.

They range from the Christian right who argue that man is entrusted by God to protect the Earth, via liberal Democrats, to military grandees who worry about the country's strategic dependence on oil from places like Iran.

The president was also set to propose that America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) be doubled to 1.5 billion barrels of oil by 2027, citing the risks of natural disaster or terrorist attack disrupting US supplies.

At that level, the SPR would have enough oil to power the US economy for roughly 97 days, compared to about 55 days now. The reserve was last tapped following Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

A bigger US reserve could also depress world oil prices, which last summer hit record highs above 78 dollars a barrel.

"But it's going to be done over 10 years, so the impact should really be minimal," WTRG Energy analyst James Williams said.

earlier related report
Bush focus on oil imports marks failure on climate, say greens
Paris (AFP) Jan 24 - Environmentalists on Wednesday fired a broadside into President George W. Bush's State of the Union address, saying he had once more failed to grasp an opportunity for tackling climate change.

"He remains delusional," was the view of Greenpeace's Steve Sawyer after Bush called for production of domestic oil and crop-made ethanol fuel to be ramped up to ease US dependence on energy imports.

"He's still trying to drill his way out of the problem, and he's found an ingenious method for increasing US farm subsidies while pretending to do something about the energy problem," said Sawyer.

One of the targets in Bush's annual speech to Congress on Tuesday is to cut petrol use in the United States by 20 percent over the next decade.

To achieve this, Bush seeks regulations encouraging a five-fold increase in the production of "renewable and alternative fuels" for the US petrol supply by 2017, and wants to overhaul fuel efficiency standards for cars.

Domestic oil production must be increased "in environmentally sensitive ways," Bush added.

Jan Kowalzig at Friends of the Earth Europe said biofuel and fuel-efficiency initiatives were "worthwhile measures" but did not tackle the critical problem posed by US emissions of greenhouse gases.

Only a mandatory cap on these emissions could drive down this pollution, said Kowalzig.

He added that biofuels could in fact worsen the greenhouse-gas problem.

"In theory, they only produce as many greenhouse gas emissions as they suck up when growing, so they would be carbon neutral.

"In practice, in most places, they are not, because transportation of the fuels, processing of the fuels, all that requires energy which is currently driven by a fossil-fuel economy. So all these biofuels projects currently add to the greenhouse-gas effect."

Bush's address had been trailed by several media reports that forecast a U-turn on climate change.

In 2001, Bush abandoned the Kyoto Protocol for curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, saying the pact's binding caps were unfair and too costly for the US economy.

Bereft of the United States, which by itself accounts for nearly a quarter of global carbon pollution, Kyoto has limped along and negotiations on cuts beyond 2012 are set to be long and bitter.

But Bush made no reference at all to the Kyoto process or the voluntary initiatives on emissions and alternative energy that he has launched bilaterally and regionally.

He did refer to global climate change, though, as a "serious challenge" that these technologies would help to confront.

The executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Yvo de Boer, said Bush's speech marked a shift towards a more sustainable form of energy and noted his choice of words about climate change.

"That I think is very encouraging," de Boer told AFP in Tokyo.

Sir Nicholas Stern, chief economic adviser to the British government and author of a report in 2006 that warned of the mounting costs of climate change, said Bush's speech was "a movement in the right direction."

"There is a recognition of the link between climate change and human activity," he told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"You have to recognise what everyone is doing. The United States is doing a lot on technology, a lot on standards. But then of course we have to scale up our action."

Some observers said Bush was out of kilter with domestic demands for action on climate change, as reflected by the popularity of former vice president Al Gore's Oscar-nominated docufilm and measures envisaged at state level and by the Democratic-controlled Congress.

"He's clearly out of step with where the American public and US Congress are right now on climate change, which is ready to go much further than continuing technology initiatives," said Jennifer Morgan, a Europe-based consultant on climate change and former spokesman with the green group WWF.

"President Bush took an important first step in saying that global climate change is a serious challenge," Dan Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, told AFP in Davos.

"But I think there were a lot of people across America and across the world who would have liked to have heard a bit more in terms of leadership in putting in place incentives for change that will bring us to a different energy future to the past."

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