President Barack Obama’s annual addresses to Congress offer a glimpse at a leader whose rhetoric on energy and the environment has changed dramatically over the past four years — from his calls to pass sweeping climate legislation in 2009 to a full-throated embrace of natural gas last year.

The speeches also matched the ebbs and flows in Obama’s political fortunes.

Four years ago, as a popular president with Democratic House and Senate majorities, Obama told Congress that his greenhouse gas proposals would “transform our economy, protect our security and save our planet from the ravages of climate change.” But in his 2011 State of the Union address following the shellacking of the midterm elections, he didn’t use the word “climate” even once.

Now, past his reelection worries, Obama put climate back atop the agenda in last month’s inaugural address. Supporters say they’re expecting much of the same in Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, with more focus on actions the administration is preparing to pursue.

“You’re going to like what you hear,” White House aides have told green groups, according to an official at one environmental organization who expects the president to publicly commit to moving forward with EPA climate regulations.

“In past speeches, there was a lot of, ‘I call on Congress,’” the official added. “And what I’m expecting to see more of this time is, ‘This is what my administration is going to do.’”

Few people expect lawmakers to have any appetite for major climate legislation no matter what Obama says Tuesday. In fact, few of the energy proposals from his past addresses to Congress have made it through the legislative gauntlet.

Cap and trade died in the Senate in 2010, the president’s proposal for a clean-energy mandate has sputtered, Republicans have beaten back his repeated calls for eliminating oil company tax breaks and his call for putting a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 now seems unrealistic, given lagging sales figures.

Obama himself seemed to be dialing back expectations in his 2011 address.

“None of this will be easy. All of it will take time,” he said. “And it will be harder because we will argue about everything. The costs. The details. The letter of every law.”

Here’s a look back at Obama’s language as it has evolved over the years.

Fresh off his victory over John McCain and an Inauguration that drew a record crowd, the president set an optimistic tone in his first address to a joint session of Congress.

“Now is the time to act boldly and wisely — to not only revive this economy but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity,” he said.

And he sought to fulfill his campaign promise to tackle global warming, calling on Congress to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation that would include a cap on carbon emissions.

“But to truly transform our economy, protect our security and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy,” he said. “So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.”

Climate activists say they had every reason to share in that optimism.

“We came in with a lot of hope and change, and Obama, we were hoping that he really can change Washington,” said Melinda Pierce, a lobbyist at the Sierra Club.

Obama also used the speech to pledge that “we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years” and to tout the billions of dollars in green-energy spending coming in his just-enacted stimulus program.

About six months after the House narrowly approved cap and trade, the president used his first official State of the Union address to pressure the Senate to act.

“I am grateful to the House for passing such a bill last year,” he said. “And this year, I’m eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate.”

Obama pushed back on an aggressive campaign by Republicans and industry groups to paint cap and trade and his other energy proposals as job-killers that would tank the economy.

“I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy. I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change,” he said. “But here’s the thing — even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future — because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”

But the president’s call for action encompassed a wide range of energy sources, including his long-running support for nuclear power and “clean coal.” He also pledged to make “tough decisions” on opening new coastal areas to offshore and gas drilling, an initiative that the administration wound up scaling back after the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

Cap and trade had been dead for months by the time Obama gave his 2011 State of the Union address. The Democrats’ Senate majority was diminished and an emboldened GOP had taken the House.

With one of his signature legislative priorities dead, the president shied away from talk about climate change — he didn’t use the word “climate” at all. Instead, he stressed the economic potential of renewable energy, saying the nation had reached a “Sputnik moment” and repeatedly invoking his call for the U.S. to “win the future.”

Despite the energy content, the dearth of climate mentions infuriated environmentalists who were still licking their post-cap-and-trade wounds.

“Climate change clearly is a policy priority for the president,” Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program, said recently. “But it seems like the frame has always been, ‘What is the realistic legislative and political context?’ This has generated a lot of frustration with some environmental groups, but the president in some respects is a creature of what Congress can give him.”

Obama spoke of the importance of reinventing oneself after facing hardship, comments that mirrored his own situation in the aftermath of the failed climate bill. He told a story about Robert and Gary Allen, brothers who, after their roofing business fell on hard times, used a government loan to begin manufacturing solar shingles.

“That’s what Americans have done for over 200 years: reinvented ourselves,” he said.

Obama also called on Congress to pass a clean-energy standard mandating that 80 percent of the country’s electricity be generated from low-carbon sources by 2035. And he set a goal of putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

The speech laid the groundwork for what Obama would later refer to as his “all-of-the-above energy” strategy.

“Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all — and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen,” he said.

Last year’s State of the Union address had a heavy focus on energy but scant mention of climate change.

The speech mirrored the tone of his second presidential campaign, in which Obama spoke in broad strokes about the importance of investing in clean energy and expanding domestic oil and gas development.

The strategy was aimed at casting the widest possible net. It was an effort to provide something for everybody, from oil workers on the Gulf to wind energy workers in the Midwest.

“This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy. A strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper and full of new jobs,” Obama said in a line that was repeated in future campaign speeches.

Obama spent much of the speech touting his fossil fuel bona fides, an effort to counter longtime GOP criticism that the president is anti-oil and gas.

“He was getting hammered,” Slocum said. “He was sensitive to those attacks, and I think he was sensitive to the charges that he was hostile to American energy and oil and gas.”

In his speech, Obama said that “over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.” That came alongside other statistics about oil production being at record highs.

He also seized on the natural gas boom, stressing that “my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” he said.

The focus on oil and gas frustrated much of Obama’s liberal base.

“I don’t think it’s fair to criticize the president for not being able to put together a sweeping climate change plan, but the thing where it’s legitimate to criticize him is the contradictory position on an ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy, particularly his focus on oil and gas,” Slocum said.

Obama was still pushing his clean energy agenda, however. He used the speech to promote the Pentagon’s green-energy programs, which have drawn attacks from many Republicans in Congress, and announced that the administration would “allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power 3 million homes.”

“The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change,” Obama said while lamenting that Congress also hadn’t followed his previous call for a clean-energy standard. “So far, you haven’t acted. Well, tonight, I will.”