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Skriven 2006-09-28 23:32:16 av Whitehouse Press (1:3634/12.0)
Ärende: Press Release (0609283) for Thu, 2006 Sep 28
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President Bush Discusses Energy in Alabama
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For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 28, 2006

President Bush Discusses Energy in Alabama
Hoover Public Safety Center
Hoover, Alabama


˙˙˙˙˙ In Focus: Energy ˙˙˙˙˙

12:06 P.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT: You know, the price of gasoline has been dropping, and
that's good news for the American consumer, it's good news for the small
business owners, it's good news for the farmers. But it's very important
for us to remember that we still have an issue when it comes to dependence
on foreign oil. And one way to become less dependent on foreign oil is for
us to develop new ways to power our automobiles right here in America.

And so I've come to Hoover, Alabama, to recognize this city for being
innovative and progressive and for having a good football team. (Laughter
and applause.) I want to thank Mayor Tony Petelos and the city council for
serving and leading. See, what we have just witnessed is a police force
that is filling up its vehicles with a fuel called E85. When you hear
somebody talk about fuel E85, that means 85 percent of the fuel comes from
ethanol. And ethanol is produced from corn. And corn is grown right here in
the United States of America.

One way to become less dependent on foreign oil is to use American-grown
products to power our automobiles. And that's what we just witnessed. So I
asked Officer Parker, of the Hoover Police Department, I said, do you like
using E85? See, he has a choice, because there are what we call flex-fuel
vehicles. He can either use ethanol-based fuel or regular gasoline. As a
matter of fact, there's a lot of cars in the United States that are
flex-fuel, and some of you probably don't even know you've got a car that's
flex-fuel. It doesn't cost much money, by the way, to convert a regular
automobile, an automobile that uses gasoline, to a flex-fuel car.

So anyway, so I said, Officer Parker, I said -- first, I told him thanks
for serving. And then I said, you've got a choice, don't you, between
gasoline and E85? He said, I do. I said, which one do you pick? He said,
E85. I said, why? He said, because it's got a little better "git up" to it.
In other words, it works just fine.

And it works just fine for other reasons, as well. It works just fine
because it helps keep our air clean. It works just fine because it helps
address a national security issue. So one of the important policies of
governments ought to be to encourage the production and use of ethanol. And
there's a federal role for that. In other words, we provide tax credits. We
think it's in our national interest that ethanol penetrate more market --
in other words, more people use ethanol.

We're providing research dollars, and one reason you provide research
dollars is because it's going to be important for us to use something
beyond corn to make ethanol. In other words, corn is good, and so is sugar.
But you can imagine it's going to put a little strain on the corn market
after a while if the only raw material we use for ethanol is corn. After
all, you've got to feed the cows, and feed the hogs, and feed people, as
well as feed automobiles with fuel.

And so the federal government has committed to spending a fair amount of
your money to research other ways to make ethanol. And one such place where
good research is going on is right here in the state of Alabama at Auburn
University.

And I just had the honor of meeting a professor who came here from South
Africa and is now one of the eminent scholars there at Auburn who spends
his time developing new ways to make ethanol. See, what's happening here in
America is that we have made it a focused effort of our government to
diversify our fuel, and we're spending your money to do it.

The doc was telling me that one of these days we could be using switch
grass to be making ethanol. That's pretty good news for people. You know,
if that ever becomes a reality, there's going to be a lot of switch-grass
growers.

He was talking to me about how they're spending time and money figuring out
whether or not we can use wood products to make ethanol. Imagine if we can
achieve a technological breakthrough that enables us to use wood chips. You
got a lot of wood here in Alabama. You'll become one of the leading ethanol
producers when we achieve that breakthrough. And that's good news for
America.

I like the idea of a President or a Governor saying, you know something,
there's a lot of corn, and we're less dependent on oil from overseas, or,
we've got some new breakthroughs, which makes us less dependent on oil. And
the good news is this technology also helps us be good stewards of the
environment.

And so I want to thank the good folks from Hoover, Alabama for thinking
differently, for being on the leading edge of change. I appreciate the
Mayor and the city council for thinking about how best to represent your
people, and you're making a fine contribution to our country, as well.

It's an honor to be here. I'm thrilled to see this E85 plant operating
right here in the state of Alabama. I predict there are more coming. And
when more come, this country is going to be better off.

Thanks for having me, and God bless. (Applause.)

END 12:11 P.M. CDT
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