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Biofuels Will Power Navy's Next Deployment (sandiegouniontribune.com)
mdsolar writes with news about the launch of the "Great Green Fleet," part of a Navy plan to use 50% alternative fuels by 2020. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports: "This Wednesday, there surely will be tears, hugs and excitement as sailors begin another deployment to the world's hotspots. On the surface, it will be a replay of a common occurrence in any Navy town when sailors go to sea, but in the ships' gas tanks will be fuel made from renewable resources that has officials back at the Pentagon exuberant. 'Underway on beef-fat power' might not have the same ring as 'Underway on nuclear power,' the historic message the Nautilus submarine beamed when it left the pier 61 years ago today. Nonetheless, the Navy is trumpeting the use of renewable biofuels as a game-changer. In 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced that the Navy and Marine Corps would get half of their power from non-fossil fuel sources by 2020, and that the Navy would deploy an entire carrier strike group using biofuels by 2016."
The reason that we have all of those ships in the first place is to have the option to use them, if needed. Here, the Navy is creating the option of sourcing fuel from domestic, non-petroleum sources. Add to that the building of the infrastructure and development of efficient techniques of production for military and domestic use, and you've got nothing but gravy (which is not quite a biofuel...)
So long as the admiralty keeps the options of nuclear and petroleum fuels as alternatives, I expect this will benefit far more than it will cost.
Oil is less than $30 a barrel, yet the Navy is paying $26 a gallon for "green" fuel.
The next time any of you SJW/Environmentalists bitch about the cost of the Armed Forces, please go fuck yourself.