George W. Bush, in his 2007 State of the Union Address:
"Let us build on the work we have done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next ten years — thereby cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.
To reach this goal, we must increase the supply of alternative fuels, by setting a mandatory fuels standard to require 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017 — this is nearly five times the current target. At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks — and conserve up to eight and a half billion more gallons of gasoline by 2017."
Weeks after pledging major investments in renewable energy, President George W. Bush is calling for cuts at Colorado’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, drawing complaints Monday from two of the state’s Democratic lawmakers.
A centerpiece of Bush’s State of the Union speech this year was a 20 percent cut in gasoline use by 2017 made possible in part by increasing the use of renewable fuels.
Colorado’s Democratic lawmakers criticized Bush’s proposed budget, delivered to Congress on Monday, for increasing spending on fossil fuel and nuclear development while cutting the Energy Department’s renewable research lab by 3 percent.
Bush’s proposed budget would decrease funding for the Golden, Colo., lab to $181.5 million from $187.5 million, they said. The lab does the nation’s primary research on renewable energy and energy efficiency.