HARRISBURG — Gov. Ed Rendell said Wednesday that he wants to require transportation fuels sold in Pennsylvania to be blended with cleaner-burning alternative fuels produced domestically.

Rendell timed the announcement to coincide with the opening of a WoGo ethanol fueling station about 30 miles southeast of Harrisburg in Lititz. It's the first station in Pennsylvania — and the northeast — to offer an 85 percent ethanol blend to the public.

Requiring the blends is part of Rendell's wider ambition to find alternatives to the hundreds of millions of gallons of transportation fuel made from Persian Gulf oil that are used in Pennsylvania each year.

Shifting to fuel sources like ethanol will create more local industries and jobs, result in cleaner air and stabilize the price of gas, Rendell said.

Rendell did not specify a percentage blend he wants to require or a time frame in which to accomplish it, but he said he would seek to have the initiative proposed in legislation by July 31. Eligible alternative fuels could be derived from coal, crops, timber, soybeans and methane gas from landfills and coal mines, he said.

Rendell's environmental protection secretary, Kathleen A. McGinty, said last month that a "very substantial" company is close to announcing what could be Pennsylvania's first ethanol plant and one of the largest in the East. The governor's proposed fuel requirement is unrelated, McGinty's spokesman Kurt Knaus said.

PITTSBURGH — Alcoa Inc., the world's largest aluminum producer, is training managers to operate 15 U.S. plants should 9,000 union workers strike next month.The company's five-year contract with the United Steelworkers expires May 31.A strike is possible because Alcoa wants those workers to start paying part of their health insurance premiums for the first time."If there is a work stoppage it would be our intention to run the facilities," company spokesman Kevin Lowery said Wednesday."We would use salaried employees and if we had to hire temporary employees to (keep the plants running), we'd hire temporary employees," he said.