The Navy unveiled a major update of its energy policies ashore on Tuesday, calling for improved efficiency, greater conservation and increased use of renewable power to cut energy consumption in half at bases worldwide by the end of the decade.
Vice Admiral Phil Cullom, deputy chief of naval operations, said the first updated energy policy for shore installations in 18 years was aimed primarily at improving energy security for the Navy’s 70 bases and other facilities worldwide.
“Energy security is a strategic imperative and it applies to both ashore and afloat,” Cullom said in a telephone briefing on the policy. “The instruction that has just been published is … the latest example of how we’re driving a Spartan energy ethos.”
He did not say how much the Navy planned to invest toward reaching the goals of the new policy.
The Navy has established a goal of cutting its power consumption in installations ashore in half by 2020. The Navy also wants half of its energy to come from renewable sources by the end of the decade, and it wants half of its installations to be net-zero consumers of energy by then.
The goals are part of President Barack Obama’s “all-of-the-above” push to boost green energy production and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The administration set a goal in April for the Pentagon to produce three gigawatts of solar, wind and geothermal power on military bases by 2025.
The green energy drive came under fire in Congress after the Navy paid high prices for test batches of biofuel for use in jets and ships. It paid $424 a gallon in 2009 for an algae-based oil and nearly $27 a gallon for biofuels for next week’s first test of a Navy strike force powered mostly by alternative fuel.
Lawmakers angry over the cost are pushing legislation in Congress that would block the military from spending more on alternative fuels than it would pay for conventional petroleum.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has said the Navy does not plan to purchase operational quantities of biofuels until they can be bought at competitive prices.
