President Bush embarked on a battle to remain relevant yesterday after what the White House had called “bold, visionary initiatives” on energy and health left Congress distinctly underwhelmed.

He tried to generate some momentum with a trip to Wilmington, Delaware, where he toured a DuPont plant conducting research into alternative fuels, such as ethanol, which he says are needed to cut America’s petrol consumption.

In his State of the Union speech, Mr Bush linked his goal of energy independence with the need to tackle climate change. Aides had hoped that the announcement would take some of the spotlight away from Iraq and prove that Mr Bush would not be a lame duck in his final two years in office.

Senator Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, reacted by saying: “The President finally acknowledged the problem of global warming... but he did not offer a real plan to deal with climate change.”

Barbara Boxer, the Democrat chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, said: “The President’s speech was more notable for what he didn’t say on global warming than what he did say.” She is pressing for binding targets on reducing emissions such as those set out in the Kyoto Protocol — long since rejected by Mr Bush.

Philip Clapp, of the National Environmental Trust, said: “The President is being just as intransigent on global warming as he is on Iraq.” To produce the 35 billion gallons of ethanol a year Mr Bush says is needed “would require an additional 129,000 square miles of farmland, an area the size of Kansas and Iowa, in corn production — which is not very likely”.

However, increased ethanol production is popular in Mid-western seats, including Iowa, whose caucuses kick off the presidential nomination process and which is building eight processing plants for the new fuel technology.

Indeed, Barack Obama, the Democrat presidential hopeful who has become a leading advocate of ethanol production in his state of Illinois, was noticeably more polite than many of his colleagues about the President’s speech.

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