Militaries Can’t Transition to Renewable Energy

Excerpt

In promoting the use of renewable energy, U.S. administrations have put considerable focus on the U.S. military. That’s a logical priority: The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States, and it consumes close to 80 percent of the federal government’s total. In 2009, Obama administration Navy Secretary Ray Mabus began planning for half of the U.S. Navy’s energy use to be supplied by non-fossil fuel sources by 2020—a year that came and went—and for half of the Navy’s onshore installations to have net-zero carbon emissions.

After the Trump administration abandoned these plans, U.S. President Joe Biden appointed six senior officials to the Defense Department to advance climate policy in the U.S. military. Biden’s senior climate appointee at the Pentagon, Joe Bryan, advocated for canceling the military’s national security exemption for emissions reduction. In the 2022 U.S. National Security Strategy, there are more mentions of “climate” than of “China” or “Iran,” and the single mention of “energy security” focuses on transitioning from fossil fuels. The Biden administration has also promoted greater electrification of the battlespace in order to increase the use of renewable energy.

Brenda Shaffer is a faculty member at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, a senior advisor for energy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the co-author, with Alan Howard and Daniel Nussbaum, of Operational Energy, to be published in September.