The Navy's Energy Vision

In his keynote address to the 2010 Climate and Energy Symposium yesterday, the Honorable Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, highlighted the Navy’s commitment to both increasing energy efficiency throughout the Navy and reducing the Navy’s dependence on fossil fuels. Secretary Mabus’s order to his commanders is clear … by 2020 the U.S. Navy will meet fifty percent of its energy requirements with either renewable sources or with biofuels.

One of the biggest challenges facing a large-scale conversion to renewable energy sources is the fact that the required infrastructure (smart grids and meters, biofuel and electric stations, etc) is not in place. It’s a vicious cycle of sorts … no infrastructure so no widespread public demand, no large demand so no incentive for companies to build the infrastructure. The Secretary noted that with millions of acres of land, eighty thousand buildings, sixty thousand vehicles, thousands of aircraft and hundreds of ships, he can create the demand. “It’s like the opposite of Field of Dreams. If we come, they will build it”, said Secretary Mabus. As on-base infrastructure increases and sailors and Marines become accustomed to driving Navy hybrid, electric and biofuel vehicles, some of those same sailors and Marines will buy those vehicles for themselves, followed finally by their neighbors in town.

Secretary Mabus is the first to admit his 2020 goal is extremely ambitious. He is quick to note, however, that this is not the first time the Navy has been at the forefront of changes in energy sources. In the nineteenth century the Navy led the change from wind to coal. In the twentieth it was from coal to gas. Now in the twenty-first, it’s time again for change.

The Department of the Navy has already been working towards Secretary’s vision.
• Next month the “Green Hornet” will take it’s first test flight. The Green Hornet is an F/A-18 fighter jet with engines converted to use a camelina-based biofuel.
• Last fall, the USS Makin Island (LHD-8) and her hybrid propulsion system saved $2M in fuel on her voyage from the shipyard in Mississippi around South America to her homeport of San Diego.
• The Marine Corps has established a prototype forward operating base (FOB) at Quantico to test renewable energy sources and quickly transition them to Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Geothermal systems at NAWS China Lake in California power the entire base.  In fact, the Navy sells excess energy to CA power companies.