During next week's State of the Union address, President Bush is likely to ask for rapidly increasing use of ethanol in the coming decades, according to Reuters. This would be a significant shift from the administration's current strategy of asking for only increases in renewable fuels that the industry is likely to meet anyway.

Is politics at play? Reuters says the White House could ask for a higher volume of ethanol be consumed than democrats are asking for in a proposed bill, 60 billion gallons by 2030. This would steal some thunder from democrats as both parties are fully on the ethanol bandwagon.

But to make this goal achievable, we need more money for cellulosic ethanol research and incentives to build out the infrastructure. As we know, ethanol from corn won't get us there.

Last year's energy budget called for $150 million in biomass related research money, a fraction of what we are spending on fossil fuel and nuclear research. If Bush doesn't combine federal dollars with a sustainable goal, then it will be another empty promise, just like his "replacing our foreign oil imports" words of last year.