Guess which organization is one of the most pro-active groups in our country when it comes to promoting and converting the energy it requires to alternative fuels and renewable energy? The answer might surprise you. I know it did me (from McClatchy): it’s the US Military!
While deliberations grind on in Congress about how to shift the nation’s energy away from fossil fuels, the Defense Department is putting plans into action with such things as electric-drive ships that save fuel costs, solar-based water purification in Afghanistan that reduces the need for dangerous convoys, and solar and geothermal power at U.S. bases.
The changes eventually could spread to civilian life. The size of the military’s investment will create economies of scale that help bring down the costs of renewable energy, and military innovations in energy technologies could spread to civilian uses, just as the Internet did. In addition, military innovations could help reduce the nation’s overall emissions of heat-trapping gases from fossil fuel use.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the Defense Department looks at energy changes as “one of America’s big strategic imperatives — to reduce our reliance on foreign sources of fossil energy, to make us better war fighters and to get us more down the road to energy independence. We also feel the military can lead in this regard.”
The Navy plans to test a biofuel blend in its main attack aircraft the F-18 Hornet in the near future. The Army hopes to have 4000 electrical vehicles by 2013, which would be one of the largest all electrical fleets in the world. The Air Force plans to use 25% renewable energy by 2025, and have half its planes running on biofuels by 2016. The Navy already has its first hybrid amphibious assault craft in operation, the USS Makin Island. It’s maiden voyage saved $2 MILLION DOLLARS in fuel costs.
In Afghanistan, the military is increasing its reliance on solar and wind energy to reduce the number of fuel convoys necessary which are always at great risk of attack. It is also employing solar powered water purification systems. By 2020, the Navy expects that half of all its bases will generate all of their energy requirements.
As for that biofuel that the Navy is developing, this is how it is being made:
The Super Hornet is Navy aviation’s largest energy user. It’s being put through a series of tests, including the one planned on Thursday at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in southern Maryland. The Navy is using an aviation biofuel made from camelina sativa plant, a non-food plant in the mustard family. The plant can be grown in rotation with crops such as wheat instead of letting fields lie fallow, so it provides farmers with another crop without taking land away from food production.
Not a bad way to help both our military and our farmers.
More importantly, by taking the lead in converting to alternative energy sources, the military is also taking the lead in spurring innovation in green technologies and in the development of alternative energy and the infrastructure necessary to produce it at a lower cost.
That will eventually make alternative energy cheaper and likely to become ever more attractive to the civilian sector of our economy as fossil fuel prices continue to rise. Much like NASA spurred technological innovation in all sorts of areas back during the 60’s and 70’s, the Pentagon hopes its efforts will lower the cost and increase the efficiency of the alternative energy technologies our country and our world needs.
Not to mention the fact that these developments will have the added benefit of reducing carbon emissions which drive climate change. You see the military isn’t waiting for Congress to get its act together on climate change legislation. It’s preparing for the future now:
[Amanda J.] Dory [Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense] … said that the Defense Department sees climate change trends that will cause resource scarcity, environmental destruction and other problems, even under conservative projections.
“The Department of Defense doesn’t have the luxury for waiting for 100 percent certainty before making decisions,” she added. “The department is used to dealing with both complexity and uncertainty.”
Imagine that. People capable of dealing with both complexity and uncertainty. Unlike say, Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or the people too lazy to stop listening to their simple minded and wrong-headed bs everyday and actually learn about what’s really happening in the world.
And finally let me just say: Wow! Here is another “Big Guvmint” program that will have spin-off effects that will benefit all members of our society, whether they are black or white, Asian or Hispanic, Religious or Secular Humanists, Tea Partiers or the “Other 95%”, Wingnuts or Moonbats, for years to come.
Something tells me that “President Palin” wouldn’t approve of these actions. Something also tells me that Muslim Kenyan Pretender Obama had something (probably a lot, actually) regarding these efforts by the department of Defense to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels.
But whatever the reason, to me this is change I can believe in. Just don’t tell the Republicans in Congress about it, okay?
Indeed. I read about this a couple of weeks ago and was hoping you would take it up. Palin doesn’t read newspapers (oh wait, she reads all of them) so she doesn’t know about this attempt to bankrupt Alaska yet.
Steven, you’re killing my anti-Military-Industrial-Complex buzz….. ;-)~
Truth be told, if this works out, it wouldn’t be the first time the Military takes on technology that could well end up revolutionizing Civilian life…. like the Jeep, Cellular communications (CDMA), compact rations, etc…
I think the big thing will be whether they can work up the fuel-generation plants to be relatively small, simple, leaving small amounts of (dangerous)waste products, that produce good-quality product in decent quantities.
Tough criteria, but they’re up against Big Oil, so that bar’s high….
Well, they have the big bucks, the autonomy, and the single-purposed pragmatism that’s needed for getting stuff done. They invented (contracted, actually) the core of the Internet, too. What with the fall of the Soviet Union and the capitalist rebranding of China, the US military might be the largest socialist dictatorship on the planet. Such organizations do get things done, for better or for worse.
We can’t afford to turn to them as the big daddies who will fix all our mistakes, but it’s good to see that they’ve turned to much more useful activities than just blowing shit up and producing vast heaps of radioactive leftovers. Apparently during the current administration, at least, they are among the few large US institutions that accept climate change and the end of fossil energy as realities requiring a full strategic response.
Interesting post. Some numbers — the internets tell me that camelina sativa can produce about 100 gallons (378 litres) of oil per acre. Current US oil consumption per annum is about 1.2 trillion litres (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con-energy-oil-consumption). This implies that about 5 million square miles would have to be used to grow one crop of camelina per year, if we wanted to replace most of our fossil fuel consumption with this renewable energy source (not counting inefficiencies such as the energy required to grow the crop). That’s a large area : the area of the US is only 3.5 million square miles. The US produces about 50 million metric tons of wheat per year, with crop yields of around 1 metric ton per acre. This implies that about 50 million acres (78000 square miles) are under wheat cultivation in the US.
If camelina were introduced as a rotation crop with wheat over this entire area, it could provide only 1.5% of our oil consumption. Maybe that’s enough for the military, but its not an answer to our overall energy needs.
By your numbers, wheat would yield growers about $200/acre at current prices.
3 barrels of oil — roughly 100 gallons — would yield around $250/acre, assuming it sells at about the price of crude oil (a huge assumption). So there would certainly be a major incentive for the growers.
If your numbers are correct, though, even at maximum output, this source would remain small compared to other renewable energy tech. Personally I think biofuels are probably a dead end except as a way to deal with agricultural waste, at least in the long run. Solar and wind seem to have much more growth potential.
I agree. The problem is that photosynthesis in plants is just not very efficient at producing energy. In particular, photovoltaic solar energy is an order of magnitude (or more ) more efficient than plant photosynthesis.
Doesn’t surprise me at all. DoD was in the forefront of synfuels in the 1970’s. It’s called Logistics and you don’t want to be dependent on a supply line from the Middle East, even if you control the Middle East.
Yeah. Who first pointed out the strategic implications of global climate change – and during the Bush Administration at that? Even before it happened on the baseball diamond and the football field, who gave black folks a chance to prove themselves on merit, and in a much broader, society-changing arena? The US military.
A lot of our officer corps is politically conservative. But that doesn’t mean they are reactionary. Our military is firmly subordinate to our civilian leaders – another piece of important leadership from George Washington that often gets overlooked.
When Uncle says get it done, military leaders do not permit themselves to engage in fantasies about why it shouldn’t be done, doesn’t need to be done, etc. They figure how they are going to get it done, in that messy, expensive, bureaucratized military way. Those who don’t agree with this approach end up where MacArthur and Walker did – in civvies. Spare a thought today for our American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.
President Obama took some flak from Liberals when he gave his speech on Energy Security & Independence in front of a new fighter jet.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/energy-security-and-independence
I don’t think that he chose the location to emphasize the fighter jet, but rather to emphasize how important the military is, and will be, in research for alternative fuels etc. They are well on their way and if they can develop good energy solutions for our ‘military on the move’, so to speak, those solutions are likely to have lots of applications in the private sector! As long as we are in Afghanistan and it is so difficult to get any supplies to our troops, they are very motivated to come up with solutions.
There is no evil from which some good does not come. – Voltaire