The Bush administration has prepared a report for Congress that recommends continuing federal incentives for ethanol-fuel vehicles — even though the report also found that the program has failed to meet either of its goals of reducing gasoline consumption and increasing the use of alternative fuels. Under the program, automakers that produce vehicles that can run on either ethanol or gasoline receive credits that allow them to lower the average fuel economy of the rest of their vehicles. But the report says that almost none of the duel-fuel vehicles are actually using ethanol, and that the program actually led to an increase in gasoline consumption of 473 million gallons last year and a rise in carbon dioxide emissions of 1.46 million metric tons.
