Obama wants research to wean vehicles off oil

Posted: Fri 7:31 AM, Mar 15, 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is pushing for more federal research into clean energy technologies that can wean automobiles off oil.

Obama proposed the idea of an energy security trust last month in his State of the Union address. The idea is to use revenue from oil and gas leases on federal lands and offshore to finance research into vehicles powered by electricity, biofuels or natural gas.

The president plans to give more details of his energy agenda today during a visit to the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago. Argonne is one of the Energy Department's largest national laboratories for scientific and engineering research, staffed by more than 1,250 scientists and engineers.

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