WASHINGTON, Dec 14: The United States will put the brakes on gasoline-guzzling vehicles with a landmark energy bill establishing new auto fuel economy standards that cleared a key hurdle and was set to become law.

The US Senate passed a wide-ranging energy bill late Thursday calling for a 40 per cent increase in fuel economy standards by 2020.

The “Energy Independence and Security Act,” passed on a 86-8 vote, and the White House said President George W. Bush would sign it after it is approved by the House of Representatives.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the Democratic-controlled House would pass the bill next week, calling it “a cause for celebration for our country.”

“The vote by the Senate to overwhelmingly pass historic and sweeping energy security legislation is great news for American consumers worried about the price of gas at the pump,” Pelosi said. Gasoline pump prices are more than double the price in 2001, with heating oil costs triple that of 2001.

The action came as a 190-nation conference on the Indonesian island of Bali was hammering out an accord on how to fight global warming in the next decade, with the United States and the European Union fighting over the framework.

“It sends a message to world leaders meeting in Bali that the United States is serious about addressing global warming,” Pelosi said, noting the bill would reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to taking 28 million cars and trucks off the road.“It makes a major commitment to home-grown biofuels, sending our energy dollars to the Midwest, not the Middle East. It sets our nation on a new course -- a new direction for energy security,” the House leader said.

The legislation represents a compromise between automakers and environmental groups for an average 35 mile-per-gallon (14.7 km per litre) standard by 2020, the first increase by Congress since the first standards were passed in 1975.

The 2008 model year standards are 27.5 miles per gallon (11.6 km per litre) for cars and 22.5 mpg for trucks.As part of the flurry of last-minute changes, Democratic Michigan Senator Carl Levin attempted to squeeze in some help for Detroit automakers by inserting a statement asserting that Congress and federal auto safety regulators have the final say over fuel economy rules.

The end result of negotiations was a far narrower package of energy proposals than what House and Senate Democrats had laid out earlier this year, with no new standards for renewable power from electric utilities and no new incentive plans for alternative technologies, such as plug-in hybrids.—AFP