WASHINGTON – In an extraordinary move, the Bush administration plans to publish a document Friday listing various ways to control global-warming gases, while simultaneously disavowing the document’s conclusions and warning that new regulations could lead to a ?command-and-control? regime covering a broad range of commercial and household activities, including factories and power plants but also lawnmowers.

The document, published by The Wall Street Journal, has been the subject of a weeks-long conflict between officials at the White House and Environmental Protection Agency attempts to summarize the benefits and costs of regulating greenhouse gas emissions, without drawing any conclusions.

The Bush administration has long opposed allowing the EPA to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, arguing that doing so would turn the agency into a massive planning and zoning board, with the power to block construction of schools, hospitals, apartment buildings and a range of other facilities whose emissions have previously not been subject to regulation.

In a letter accompanying the EPA document and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, Susan Dudley, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, bluntly disavowed the analysis, saying it relied on “untested legal theories” and “cannot be considered Administration policy or representative of the views of the Administration.”

“There is strong disagreement with many of the legal, analytical, economic, science and policy interpretations in the draft. These letters do reflect agreement with you that the Clean Air Act is a deeply flawed and unsuitable vehicle for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Dudley wrote in the letter, dated Thursday and addressed to the EPA’s administrator, Stephen Johnson.

The administration’s decision to publish the EPA analysis ? while also attacking many of its conclusions ? represents the latest twist in a long-simmering conflict between the EPA and White House over how to respond to last year’s Supreme Court decision charging the EPA with determining whether greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare. A finding by the EPA that they do would require the agency to regulate them under the terms of the federal Clean Air Act, spurring new rules across a range of industries.

As president, Bush has long opposed economy-wide controls on carbon dioxide. Although he promised as a presidential candidate in 2000 to regulate carbon dioxide emissions if elected, he retreated from that pledge shortly into his first term, saying such a move could sharply raise energy costs. As an alternative, the administration has instead pushed investments in clean-energy technologies, including renewable fuels, hydrogen fuel cells, and advanced car batteries.

Bush’s approach to global warming has often put him at odds with EPA officials. When the EPA published a report in June 2002 stating that greenhouse gases were causing global air and ocean temperatures to rise, Mr. Bush distanced himself from the document, saying it had been “put out by the bureaucracy.”

Last December, the EPA went further, concluding tentatively that greenhouse gases endanger public welfare. The agency forwarded its finding to a White House office that reviews proposed regulations. The document was never published. The same month, Johnson denied California permission to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, despite a recommendation in favor of California’s request by many of his top aides. That decision has prompted a lawsuit by California and more than a dozen other states that want to control such emissions.

In May, the EPA forwarded to the White House a draft document soliciting public comment on the benefits and costs of regulating greenhouse gas emissions. But the document was returned to the agency, after White House officials objected to several portions of the document that appeared to conflict with Mr. Bush’s frequent arguments against controlling greenhouse gases. Among them: a finding that “the net benefit to society” of controlling automobile carbon-dioxide emissions “could be in excess of $2 trillion.”

The document ? which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal – also concluded that automobiles could be even more fuel efficient than currently required by law. Based on advanced technologies such as plug-in hybrid vehicles, fuel efficiency could be improved to well above 35 miles per gallon between 2020 and 2025, the draft document said. A 2007 energy law that has been supported by the Bush administration mandates an average vehicle fuel-efficiency of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

For other sectors, the EPA draft document described how emissions such as carbon dioxide could be regulated through the government-permit process and through an emissions trading system similar to one the agency administers for acid rain pollution. The analysis conflicted with the arguments of President Bush and lobbyists for utilities and major manufacturers that allowing the EPA to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from industry would lead to a large command-and-control bureaucracy.

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