Great Green Fleet Adrift

by Tim Portz (Biomass Magazine) The enormity of the military’s fuel usage is still very much on the industry’s radar, but the exuberance of 2012-‘13 has largely been replaced with the more measured tone. -- Three years ago, in the months leading up to the publication of Biomass Magazine’s first issue focused on the military’s use of biomass-derived energy products, oil prices were enjoying a near three-year run of $100-plus a barrel. The previous summer, during its massive RIMPAC exercise, the Navy utilized a 50/50 blend of biofuels to power some of the branch’s most recognizable ships, including the USS Nimitz. Carrier-based F-18s screamed off flight decks while burning a renewable jet fuel blend, and Advanced Biofuels Association President Mike McAdams, who watched it all unfold in person, understandably assumed that the military’s transition to biofuels was well underway.

Fast forward to July of this year, when the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report detailing the U.S. Department of Defense’s investments in and use of biofuels. The report’s findings were a major disappointment for the industry, and highlight the difficulties next-generation liquid fuels will have while attempting to unseat the fossil fuel incumbents that are well-entrenched in the military. We covered this story online this summer, and in this issue, associate editor Katie Fletcher digs in further. Her feature, “Mission Incomplete,” on page 30, clearly articulates the stark differences between the stated goals of the various branches of the military and the results so far. McAdams couldn’t have known it in the summer of 2012, but the fuel consumed during that RIMPAC exercise would make up nearly 25 percent of the biofuels used since 2007. Since then, just 2 million gallons of biofuels have been purchased and used by the military, or .001 percent of the overall fuel total. Biofuel use in the military right now is, literally, a drop in the defense fuel bucket. In her story, Fletcher reports that for the Navy to achieve their stated renewables goals, they’ll need to use over 300 million gallons of biofuels by 2020.

Clearly, these early results are not what the industry had hoped for when these goals were set. Low oil prices have only served to compound the challenges for biofuel producers, as there is real congressional pressure on the military to purchase biofuels only if they can compete with the costs of their fossil-derived equivalents. At $50 a barrel, this presents the industry with a very tall order. READ MORE / MORE