Moves to improve the environmental performance of the US navy have the potential to boost the green fuel sector, argues Peter Knight

Greening the military is manna for political wags who find the juxtaposition of clean fuel and clean killing too tempting to ignore. 

Or that’s what the embryonic and struggling biofuel innovators were hoping for a couple of years ago when the US Navy launched its Great Green Fleet initiative, to create a fighting force that would operate efficiently using 50% non-fossil fuels by 2020. 

Pulitzer prize winning columnist Thomas Friedman gushed at the time: “If the navy really uses its buying power when buying power … it alone could expand the green energy market in a decisive way … we might really get a green revolution in the military. That could save lives, money and the planet, and might even help us win – or avoid – the next war. Go navy!”

But only two years later it seems that the great US navy could be going nowhere near green if the fiscal conservatives now dominating politics have their way. In this last pre-election gasp of the current administration the cost-cutters are threatening to scuttle the Green Fleet, arguing that the navy should be like any other American and drive around the block until it finds the cheapest fuel. 

The military’s job is to defend the nation, not act as a government agency to subsidise the clean fuel industry. And anyway, why should the taxpayer bankroll clean fuel when there is plenty of cheap dirty stuff available? 

On the face of it, the fiscal conservatives have a point. In Afghanistan, for example, the cost of fuel to run the diesel generators, trucks etc costs the military about $1 a gallon. The navy is paying about $27 a gallon for its biofuel made from algae (and sometimes waste chicken fat). 

Hidden costs 

But once you factor in the cost of getting the army’s conventional fuel to its destination (bumps along the treacherous Taliban road), the cost of a gallon leaps to about $400. And that does not include the costs of the lives sacrificed in protecting the fuel convoys. 

It’s these types of frightening numbers that drove the naval secretary, Ray Mabus, to start his Great Green Fleet Initiative, arguing that it would not only reduce dependency on fossil fuels increasingly sourced from areas of conflict, but it would also save lives. 

The Great Green Fleet was part of a $510m three-year, multi-agency programme to help the military develop alternatives to conventional fuel. This included solar powered tents and innovative cooling systems that used a combination of buried coils and solar-powered fans to cool the bases, rather than using conventional air-conditioning driven by electricity generated by diesel. 

The initiative was a godsend for the fledgling third-generation biofuel industry. Having a big, powerful buyer that could provide a long-term contract would enable developers to get out of their garages and scale up. Big scale always means smaller prices. 

The cost of the military-wide initiative seems high, but it is almost trivial when compared with the Pentagon’s annual budget of about $650bn. However, while the Pentagon’s spending is usually sacrosanct, times are so tough in the US economy that lawmakers are looking for any way to trim fat, even from the Pentagon. 

For those fiscal conservatives who hate anything that smacks of green, an alternative fuel programme based on hippy ingredients like algae creates opportunities for pithy, destructive soundbites for those who think a Prius is for girly men. One axe-wielding US congressman in the house reminded Ray Mabus that he was the secretary of the navy “not the secretary of energy”. 

So, it would seem that the mammoth spending of the military will not bring a green peace dividend. Not while the fiscal conservatives are dominant in Washington and the economy remains sluggish. 

Innovation in America, it seems, is now about devising very neat gadgets that bathe the populace in an eerie flat-screen light and help the chronically shy from making eye contact in elevators. 

That there is much more excitement about the few extra square millimetres on the iPhone 5 screen than turning algae into jet fuel says a lot about the fractured political environment in a country that put a man on the moon – a very long time ago. 

Peter Knight is president of Context America.