RenewableEnergyFocus.com reports:
According to Pike Research, part of Navigant’s Energy Practice, the total capacity of US Department of Defense (DOD) renewable energy installations will quadruple by 2025 – from 80MW in 2013 to more than 3200MW by 2025.
“US military spending on renewable energy programmes, including conservation measures, will reach almost $1.8 billion in 2025,” says research analyst Dexter Gauntlett. “This effort has the potential to not only transform the production, consumption, and transport of fuel and energy within the military; it will likely make the DOD one of the most important drivers of cleantech in the US.”
The Army had vehicles that were capable of running on unconventional energy. They were the old “multifuel” vehicles. If it flowed and had a heat value, they could pretty much burn it. Today’s new power plants probably are not as versatile.
This will be paid in total by the taxpayers and not as a high percent subsidy.
Good to see the Dod focus on green energy instead of defense. Not.
The military, like the space program, may have some niches for unconventional energy sources. If you’re deployed where the sun shines bright but it’s hard to move fuels, you may be able to generate electricty from solar or wind and save the gas and diesel for transport. That may be worth a premium on the cost of the unconvential energy system — we pay a lot for Humvees too.
That, and only that, should be the justification — a real military application for the alternative technology.
Heh – could that microwave non-lethal weapon be powered by a solar array? Would liberal heads explode? That’s a video I want to see.
Did anybody else notice that 3200MW divided by 80MW = 40, not 4?
But then the article also mentions “4,7000” military homes. Perhaps there is a sticky nought key…
Because of real budget cuts and the political theater of the sequester, military strength and readiness are decreasing. I’d guess we will be lucky to have a military with readiness levels from the Clinton Peace Dividend after this is over. We are more likely to return to the good old days of Jimmy Carter. If we don’t have the budget for real readiness and training, we certainly don’t have the money for green energy boondoggles.