Greentech Media

"I didn’t hear any concrete commitments on anything," said Ethan Zinler, an analyst at New Energy Finance. "The idea that [Bush is] calling on the rest of the world to remove tariffs and trade barriers on clean-energy technology … Well, the U.S. is the one that has the high tariffs for importing ethanol.  I didn’t hear anything from him about lifting that."

What was significant, however, was the president’s departure from his traditional pro-ethanol stance. While the problem of skyrocketing grain prices and the food vs. fuel problem has been debated publicly for months, President Bush made his very first mention of "complaints from our cattlemen about the high price of corn."
 
"And so we got to do something about it, and the best thing to do is not to retreat from our commitment to alternative fuels," he said, "but to spend research and development money on alternatives to ethanol made from other materials -- for example, cellulosic ethanol holds a lot of promise."

A number of scientists and entrepreneurs hope that cellulosic ethanol, which is made from the nonfood materials like switchgrass, wood chips and corn cobs, can solve many of ethanol’s problems (see Biofuel Forecast Buoys a Bit and Biofuels Battle the Highs and Lows of Market Volatility). 

But costs and other challenges have left some wondering if cellulosic ethanol ever will be viable (see Gristmill post). And some environmentalists argue that cellulosic ethanol can still displace land that might compete with traditional food sources (see Lester Brown Talks Smack About Ethanol).

A move toward cellulosic ethanol will drive up the price of soybeans, a key food source in developing countries, said Jonathan Dorn, a staff researcher at the Earth Policy Institute.

"Rising food prices around the world are translating into social unrest," he said. "These are the countries that are going to breed terrorist groups. I don’t think, from Bush’s speech, that he’s connected any of these dots at all."

Moreover, Bush’s emphasis on alternative fuels was in direct conflict with his promise to veto a bill recently passed by the House of Representatives that would eliminate subsidies to large oil companies and instead direct those funds to sources of renewable energy.

"He’s saying that we have to get off of oil, but he’s contradicting it in action," said Dorn. "If Bush was actually serious about this speech that he made, he wouldn’t be threatening to veto this bill."