How the Navy is fighting climate change with clean energy action

The US Navy is probably not the first organization that comes to mind when you think of climate action and sustainability. But on the day after Earth Day, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations, and Environment Meredith Berger was decked out in eco-green for a series of events in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the Navy’s work to prepare for climate-related risks. to draw attention. and reduce its own contributions to climate pollution.

“I am the department’s first Chief Sustainability Officer,” Berger said Newsweek. She said the task is to ensure that the Navy’s coastal bases and installations will be sustainable as the effects of climate change worsen.

“If they can’t withstand the storms we’re seeing now or the water intrusion from sea level rise, then that’s not a good investment,” she said. “We must prioritize everything that takes these climate impacts into account.”

The Ministry of Defense has identified climate change as a threat to be taken into account. Ahead of the Navy’s Climate Action 2030 strategy, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro called the climate threat to his bases “existential” and said climate impacts could increase the risks Marines and sailors face.

Berger said this is already the case in some extreme weather events that have become more severe due to climate change.

“You’re seeing more and more incidents where the Navy and Marine Corps have to respond to allies, to partners, to emergencies, for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” she said.

The Navy and other armed forces themselves are major contributors to the cause of the problem.

In a 2019 report, the Costs of War Project at Brown and Boston Universities found that the Department of Defense is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum “and correspondingly the world’s largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases.”

The military is responsible for only a small percentage of total U.S. emissions, but even that small share is more than the total emissions of some industrialized countries, including Sweden and Portugal, the report’s authors said.

In short, the military has a huge carbon footprint, and the work being done in the Navy could help reduce those emissions.

“We make an important contribution when it comes to fuel consumption emissions,” Berger said. “So that makes us a market driver and a solution setter.”

Clean energy for war fighters

Just beyond the main gate of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, a large bust of famed inventor Thomas Edison gazes down from a towering stone column, recognizing Edison’s role in creating the laboratory.

During the First World War, Edison related The New York Times that technological advances would be critical to defense, and that the government should start a “major research laboratory.”

Navy leaders at the time took him up on the idea, and the laboratory was established in 1923 along the eastern bank of the Potomac River in the southernmost part of Washington. For a century, the laboratory’s scientists and engineers have continued Edison’s innovative spirit, making major advances in radar and satellites and developing technology that allows the military to reach from the seabed to space.

More recently, many of the laboratory’s projects have focused on moving and powering Navy ships, equipment, and aircraft using alternative forms of energy. During a recent tour, laboratory scientists demonstrated experimental work in solar energy, hydrogen fuel cells, batteries and other alternative fuel sources that hold the promise of transporting and helping sailors and Marines where conventional fossil fuels cannot.

Hydrogen fuel cells have been adapted to power maritime expeditionary forces on the move and to fuel unmanned aerial vehicles or drones. The lab and its business partners have developed an experimental drone that combines a fuel cell with a thin solar panel along the wings to keep the craft aloft for days at a time, a much longer flight time than batteries would allow, researchers said.

Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina tested a fuel cell power pack that they can take into the field in a weatherproof housing, allowing them to operate electrical equipment in remote locations.

In a room in the laboratory equipped with large wave pools and sediment tanks, other researchers are testing ways to generate electricity and jet fuel from one of a sailor’s most familiar environments: seawater.

A microbial fuel cell has managed to produce small amounts of electricity from organic material surrounding it in the water. It produces only a small amount of energy, scientists said, but it could remotely control sensor and monitoring equipment at sea.

Nearby, another project on display in the lab extracts carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater. Combined, they create a fuel that can be used in aircraft. The process requires quite a bit of electricity, but as researchers have noted, that’s something that many Navy ships can produce in abundance thanks to their onboard nuclear reactors. The fuel extracted from seawater could power aircraft in situations where the normal fossil fuel supply chain could not.

Sustainable military bases

The Navy has tried this type of approach before. During the Obama administration, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus emphasized research into clean fuels, and the Navy has had some success with biofuels and other replacements for some ships and aircraft.

Navy and other military bases have also significantly expanded their use of renewable energy, and Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany in Georgia is the nation’s first military base to be energy neutral, according to the Navy.

But the focus on climate has drawn strong criticism from many in Congress. Some Republican lawmakers have warned that the current shift to clean energy is a potentially dangerous distraction from the military’s main goals.

Berger said that even if these critics disagree with the environmental goals of climate action, they should consider the economic goals.

“I’m burdened with tax dollars,” she said. “We want to make sure we invest healthily. That’s an important concept of sustainability.”

She said she cannot ignore the long-term costs of climate impacts on Navy assets or the growing threat to Navy personnel.

“If we send them into harm’s way and we understand that some of that damage is a threat to the climate, then we need to make sure we anticipate how they’re going to have to operate,” she said.