Jul. 16--WASHINGTON -- As the House prepares to take up a hot-button energy bill this month, area lawmakers agree on two things: Fuel economy standards need to be raised, and the United States needs to increase its use of nuclear energy.

Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said both elements must be in the House energy bill if he is going to support it. "The fuel standards need to be combined with a green light for nuclear energy," he said. "If we're going to move toward efficiency to clean up the air and energy independence, we need to stand up for nuclear energy." Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate and conservative Democrats who are pushing their own energy package, agreed and said he would support the fuel economy provisions in the Senate bill passed last month, hich boosts standards from 25 mpg to 35 mpg by 2020.

Fuel standards have not been increased since 1982. The Blue Dog package seeks to encourage domestic production, including nuclear power and coal, while backing technology to reduce coal emissions. "We ought to look at nuclear energy, and we ought to look at turning coal into low-carbon liquid," Rep. Davis said. "We have to look at wind and solar. We have to look at all the options we have." Democrats, who control the House by a 231-201 margin, are hardly unified over energy legislation. Debate on the legislation is expected later this month, perhaps as early as this week. Some lawmakers, led by Rep.

John Dingell, D-Mich., an ally of the auto industry, are opposed to increasing fuel economy standards. Rep. Dingell is the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said she backs the fuel standards in the Senate version. Other competing bills introduced by various House members have differing benchmarks for fuel efficiency, some more stringent than the Senate bill and some more forgiving. Reps. Baron Hill, D-Ind., and Lee Terry, R-Ind., have introduced a bill to create standards of 32 mpg to 35 mpg by 2022, with different standards for each vehicle class.

That measure has been backed by the National Automobile Dealers Association. But Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., has offered another bill that would set a 35 mpg benchmark by 2018, with 4 percent annual increases after that. Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said he thinks the Senate benchmark of 35 mpg by 2020 is "within the realm of possibility." "I think anyone would be foolish not to say we ought to try to achieve as much fuel efficiency as possible," he said. However, he cautioned that if the legislation provides too much incentive for fuel alternatives such as soybean- and corn-based ethanol, it could hurt the food supply, in particular the poultry industry, prevalent in his North Georgia district, which re ies on those agricultural products for animal feed.

"I think we should incentivize other products that aren't on the food chain," Rep. Deal said. Livestock growers are seeing prices of feed go through the roof, he said. "If we're not careful, we're making the policy choice between food and energy," Rep. Deal said. Rep. Wamp said he hopes the House energy bill will emphasize biofuels from switchgrass, which scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee already have begun to research. The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced a $125 million grant for Oak Ridge to establish a bioenergy research center that aims to make biofuels cost competitive with conventional fuels by 2012.

"The South, with Oak Ridge leading the way, is going to be an industrial center for biofuels," Rep. Wamp said. "We're going to provide the infrastructure and try to develop the retail distribution. If this bill incentivizes that, it'll be tempting to su port it, even if there are parts of the bill I'd like to see improved." E-mail Herman Wang at hwang@timesfreepress.com