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?
