Last week I posted about Nascar going green. Today I’m writing about… the military going green? What? Yep. You read that right. According to an article in the Washington Post called “Military Spearheads Clean-Energy Drive” the Pentagon, the nation’s single biggest energy consumer is starting to diversify its fuel sources. The Navy’s Blue Angels and their F/A-18 Hornets preformed at the Labor Day Expo using a half and half mix of plant-based bio fuel and regular fuel.

We all know that the military is huge. But did you know that oil supplies 80% of the military’s energy? That’s a lot, and all of that oil adds up. Every time the price of oil increases even by just a dollar the Navy’s energy costs increase by more than $30 million a year. Think about that for a minute. 30 MILLION dollars! That’s a lot of money.

Cutting costs is a big incentive for the Pentagon to change it’s energy use. From 2006 to 2009 it increased spending on renewable energy by $400 million to $1.2 billion. That’s a 300% increase! According to a PEW Project on Nation Security, Energy and Climate it is slated to reach more than $10 billion by 2030. Navy Security Ray Mabus stated that most of these new initiatives will pay themselves back in four to seven years.

The military has it’s very own reasons for switching over to natural fuel sources. While we probably cite protecting the environment and cutting down carbon emissions as our main reasons for looking into renewable energy source, the military’s biggest reasons are that for every 50 convoys of fuel brought into Afghanistan one Marine is either killed or badly injured. That’s not good.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has an ambitious set of goals for greening the Navy and Marine Corps. Probably one of the biggest one is ensuring that 50% of their energy supply by 2020 comes from alternative sources like solar power and biofuels. Mabus made it very clear that these new changes are for security purposes, not necessary because going green is a new fad. Hey, whatever it takes to get the Pentagon, the United States biggest consumer of energy, is okay by me.

Check out the Washington Post article here.