As I was saying, the thing I love most about America is that there’s always somebody here who doesn’t get the word ”” and they go out and do the right thing or invent the new thing, no matter what’s going on politically or economically. And what could save America’s energy future ”” at a time when a fraudulent, anti-science campaign funded largely by Big Oil and Big Coal has blocked Congress from passing any clean energy/climate bill ”” is the fact that the Navy and Marine Corps just didn’t get the word.
God bless them: “The Few. The Proud. The Green.” Semper Fi.
Spearheaded by Ray Mabus, President Obama’s secretary of the Navy and the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the Navy and Marines are building a strategy for “out-greening” Al Qaeda, “out-greening” the Taliban and “out-greening” the world’s petro-dictators. Their efforts are based in part on a recent study from 2007 data that found that the U.S. military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan. Today, there are hundreds and hundreds of these convoys needed to truck fuel ”” to run air-conditioners and power diesel generators ”” to remote bases all over Afghanistan.
It would fascinating to spend a day in the universe that Thomas Friedman must live in (one day would be enough). “Big Oil and Big Coal” fund a fraudulent anti-science campaign because “they” block Obama’s psuedo-science global warming Cap & Trade legislation? Sorry Tom, it wasn’t big O and big C, it was the TEA PARTY. The facts are that BP had been positioning itself to be front and center in the Global Warming fraud parade.
And by all means, let’s have our military meeting its energy requirements from a whole portfolio of sources so that we maximize the logistical challenges of meeting those energy needs at the front lines. Can’t you just see a front line mission-critical piece of equipment dead in its tracks because it needs biodiesel instead of E15? And the only fuel at the front line is E15.
Or let’s run everything on solar panels…….we’ll just have to ask the Taliban not to attack us on cloudy days.
PS to Tom: although Prez O’s legislation got mauled, the EPA is going to do their darndest to accomplish the same thing
As an engineer, with a few year around the automotive industry, I am all for fuels which pack the most energy per gallon. I have not studied 3rd generation bio-fuels but the first generation stuff was poor in that performance.
I do not often agree with the “green” people but in the case of remote bases which require overland transport I agree something better could be found. Small nuke power plants may be part of the answer as might solar cell for long term fixed bases.
Replacing current fuels for anything that moves (tanks, truck, and the like) will only work if it can be interchangeable with current fuels. If not they are not acceptable for Army/Marine use. Navy can play with alt fuels, provided the effort to move the ship back to previous fuels is small. The best fuels for ships in the long run is likely nukes.
Scott
Well, but the it seems as if they HAVE tried the bio fuels and that they DO work. Is Tom wrong in his report, #1? Larry
There is a difference between a short test or demonstration and on-going operations. The military has always had a huge role in advancing technology. They have very special needs with serious consequences if they are not met. Therefore, the cost is not always the prime objective. I think it would be great if the military can solve or mitigate some of their logistical problems while at the same time advancing alternative energy sources for civilian use. However, they should not risk military effectiveness to be eco-friendly and just because it is practical for the military, it may not be for civilian use.
Oil companies use solar power on remote sites all the time, because it is the best practical solution. So there are some applications where solar or wind is better than fossil fuels. I hope one day that our electrical storage and transporting technologies advance along with solar, wind, or other generating methods that makes energy cheap with less reliance on foreign supplies and adverse side effects. However, until then, there is nothing even close to fossil fuels and nuclear.
[i]Last time I checked, a volt-amp of electricity doesn’t care how its generated[/i]
From a strictly scientific standpoint that is correct. But from a real-world standpoint the distinctions are critical. From a front-line military standpoint they may be mission-critical, ie, life threatening.
What hasn’t had a lot of popular media attention is the havoc alternative fuels like E10, E15, and biodiesel have had on engine fuel systems and reliability. Thirty years ago if you owned a car, a motorcycle, an outboard marine engine. an inboard marine engine [gas or diesel], a chain saw, lawn mower, or generator; you could fuel all of these from commercial sources of gasoline and diesel and not give it a second thought.
Now with our plethora of fuel “choices”, you need to study the owners manuals for each of these because introduction of the wrong fuel source can totally disable the fuel system……an expensive maybe even terminal mistake for the equipment.
And as far as solar for heavy duty continuous hands-off use? Not ready for prime time by any measure. I have designed and am in the process of installing a 7Kw/day solar power system for my workshop to take it off house power (and give us a backup power source when hurricanes take our grid down for over a week). The technology for panels, charge controllers, pure-sine inverters is expensive, tricky to program correctly, and difficult to install correctly to minimize line-losses so as to maximize efficiency.
I am a strong proponent for nuclear power in electrical generation. But marine applications only make sense in two situations: submarines and aircraft carriers. As a former defense contractor I can recall the problems of nuclear in earlier classes of cruisers; overweight designs, top-heavy, horribly expensive to build, and poor life-cycle costs compared to turbines, and impossible to recruit, train, and retain enough qualified personnel to run the things. As a former contractor at Ingall’s Shipbuilding, I recall no one wanted to restart the nuclear building program because you basically have to seal of the part of the yard doing nuclear work which raises the costs of everything you build there.
It’s a tough pill for the alternative energy worshippers to swallow, but for the near future fossil fuels (liquid and solid) are just hard to beat. If they start to become scarce, economics will dictate alternatives in a logical way that governments and Al Gore can’t (or wont’).
I agree with Capt Deacon, for what it is worth. I was active duty when the US went into Greneda. One of the lessons learned was to insure system inter changeability. One Officer saw a strange building he was going to attack, but could not communicate with the Navel ship coordinating and operating command and control. Thinking quick the Officer found a pay phone and used a credit card to call DC and got throuoght to the Pentagon, he found out he was about to attack an embassy. The Army, Navy, etc had different communication systems that were not interchangeable. Doing the same with fuels could lead to a disaster! There were some combat veterans who shared these words of wisdom with me, “When you are short on everything except the enemy you are in combat”!
The Armed Forces are not the place for ‘social experimentation.’
Sometimes the margin between victory and defeat can be so thin that the consequence of a ‘social experiment’ being forced upon experienced military commanders could be a disastrous.
Just recently, a Navy ship’s commanding officer and executive officer (CO was a male, XO was a female) were relieved for cause and disciplined for having an affair.
Affairs between peers an non-peers can only have a negative effect on the combat efficiency of a naval ship. There are many other examples. Just GOOGLE or BING.
I grant that ethanol raises hell with engines which are not sued regularly. Most military engines probably don’t fall in the same use category as mh lawnmower.
But Friedman’s report says that some of this fuels actually do work and work well. Are you telling me he’s lying or his data is cooked? The armed forces have always been at the front line for certain kinds of innnovation, and this fuel issue is no different. Necessity is the mother….etc. Why should innovation with sources of power be any different? Larry
Of the two major types of alternative fuels, bio-based and coal-to-liquids based, I believe the bio-based fuels are a tragic mistake. Coal-to-liquids based fuels can be tweaked to look like petroleum derived fuels so you don’t create additional logistical problems for military units.
In my opinion (and many others), bio-based fuels are flawed from two directions: first, it is highly questionable that they represent any form of energy independence from basic fossile fuels. From a life-cycle perspective it takes as much or more fossile fuel energy to produce a given quantity of bio-based fuel than is contained within that quantity of fuel. Thus, pursuit of bio-based fuel becomes a “feel good” proposal or worse, a political subsidy proposal. Secondly, bio-based fuels such as ethanol-based fuels or biodiesel, creates an unbreakable bond between energy production and food production. To obtain some illusory savings on fuel costs, are we ready to boost basic foodstock prices (eg, corn) to make ethanol based fuels or with soybeans to make biodiesel?
The military has looked at coal-to-liquids, but of course that is not nearly as trendy and PC as bio-based fuels and its not likely that you will hear much about it from the likes of Thomas Friedman or others of his ilk. Part of the reason you won’t hear about it is that coal-to-liquids is an engineering challange and becomes economically feasible when oil prices start to hit the $100/bbl level; that is, you don’t need any government intervention to get it going, economics will do the trick. In fact, government will get in the way with its blizzard of regulations which try to discourage coal use in energy production: go figure!
I reiterate
“The Armed Forces are not the place for ‘social experimentation.’”
The broad motivation behind the push for “bio-fuel” is primarily from the political arena ‘within the Beltway’ and the Navy’s ‘Aye, Aye, Sir–Two bags full’ attempt to please the politicians speaks volumes regarding our often facile and self-serving senior naval leadership.
This puts that leadership’s efforts involving bio-fuels as being strongly motivated by social-political considerations.