Text of Bush’s speech at NKU

So I’m working with Congress to promote what’s called this Advanced Energy Initiative. And we’re working on a variety of fronts. First, one thing we can do is make sure we promote clean coal technology. We’ve got a lot of coal — like, 250-some odd years worth of coal. We also care about our environment here in America. And we’ve also got the capacity to make sure that we develop the technologies that will enable us to use this coal.

And so we’re spending money at the federal level to investigate ways to be able to diversify. One of the interesting technologies that’s now on the market is hybrid automobiles. But there’s new battery technology being developed, and I’m told to breakthroughs in this technology that will enable you to drive your first 40 miles on electricity alone. That’s a pretty good deal if we’re able to achieve that kind of breakthrough. Particularly in big cities — a lot of people in big cities aren’t going to drive 40 miles a day. They may not drive 40 miles a week. But, nevertheless, when you start taking that amount of demand off the market for gasoline, starts to begin to affect our national and economic security.

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