But Mr Bush did decline to answer one question: whether "cap and trade" programmes for greenhouse gases a system that allows people to buy and sell permits to pollute should start in the United States.
A yet-to-be-designed cap-and-trade programme for carbon emissions will raise additional revenue.
Both Barack Obama and John McCain have promised to pursue a cap-and-trade programme for limiting emissions, though neither candidate has recently emphasised climate change on the campaign trail.
Amusingly, rumours were rampant before the speech that Bush would announce a wee, industry-specific cap-and-trade programme for utilities - but apparently congressional Republicans wouldn't even allow him that.
A cap-and-trade programme for nitrogen oxides in eastern and midwestern states between 2003 and 2007 cost as much as $3.4 billion but generated benefits in lives saved and reduced drug expenditures of $7.9 billion, according to Olivier Deschênes of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Michael Greenstone of MIT and Joseph Shapiro of Yale.
The scandal was big enough for Clare Short, the international development secretary, and Margaret Beckett, then trade secretary, to abolish the aid and trade programme after Labour won the election.
"The important elements for business is that their role has been recognised," says San Bilal, head of the economic transformation and trade programme at the European Centre for Development Policy Management.
Dr San Bilal, head of the economic transformation and trade programme, European Centre for Development Policy Management in Brussels, Belgium.
The Perform Achieve Trade programme has introduced mechanisms for the identification of industry sector, designated customer, specific energy consumption and target setting.
I mine the data for statistical confirmation, work out a trading programme to exploit those patterns and when the chance of actually making money on the programme looks good enough, we go for it.
Agricultural trade programmes.
