By Ann Roosevelt
The Secretary of the Navy is trying to change how the service gets and uses energy, with a series of initiatives aimed at reducing the sea-services’ dependence on international fuel sources.
“We are too simply too dependent on foreign fossil fuels,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a speech at the National Press Club April 30.
“We would not allow our warships or our weapons to be built by the countries that we do allow our ships to be powered by their fuel, for example” he said. “This is a strategic vulnerability for us and one that has to be addressed.”
It’s a matter of strategic independence and a matter of national security, he said. For example, now, the Navy uses about one-third of the Defense Department fossil fuel requirement, which itself is part of the 2 percent federal government share of fossil fuel use in the United States.
Beyond the strategic implications of energy dependence, there is the tactical aspect, he said. For example, to move a gallon of gas to a Marine on the front lines in Afghanistan, the gallon has to be put on a tanker, cross the Pacific Ocean, land, be put on a truck and then driven as part of one of the most dangerous missions today–a convoy– to Afghanistan and on to the Marine who needs the gas.
“We lose Marines and sailors in convoys,” Mabus said. “And we take Marines away from what Marines should be doing, fight, engaging…”
Reducing the energy demand and producing what is possible locally, then Marines can be more effective. For example, there is a solar-powered water purifier in use in Afghanistan, he said.
Mabus has set five goals for reducing Navy dependence on foreign fuel, and the biggest goal is to cut service energy usage in half in a decade.
Another goal is in a decade to have half of its bases at net zero, he said. China Lake, for example, is powered by geo-thermal energy, and produces more than it needs, pushing the extra into the local power grid.
Also, last month a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet flew with a 50-50 biofuel blend of JP-5 and a camelina oil (Defense Daily, April 26).
These types of efforts are enhanced by Navy partnerships with others, such as the Department of Agriculture. In January, Mabus said, the two departments signed a memorandum of agreement to coordinate research and work together on alternative fuels. Such efforts help the American farmer, he said. The flowering Camelina plant could be grown in all the states.
There’s a lack of infrastructure to deliver such alternative fuels, he said, but to take a line from the Movie ‘Field of Dreams,’ “if we create the market…the infrastructure will come.”
The Navy is also looking at hybrid electric ships, such as the USS Makin Island (LHD-8), which has an electric drive to use at 10 knots or less, Mabus said. The ship made a transit from Pascagoula, Miss., around South America to its home port of San Diego and saved almost $2 million in fuel. Over the life of the ship, the service estimates it could save about one-quarter of a billion.
While there are naysayers for energy saving as there has been for every major move the Navy has made, from sail to steam to present day energy issues, critics have always been wrong. “This time they will be wrong again,” Mabus said.