A man with a mission

From biofuelled fighter jets to solar power-generating blankets, Ray Mabus wants to wean the US navy off fossil fuels

See gallery: “US fighting machine going green“

You have set ambitious goals for reducing fossil-fuel dependence within the US navy and Marine Corps. What are they?

By no later than 2020, at least half of all energy that the navy and marines use afloat, ashore and in the air will come from non-fossil fuel sources.


Why have you set such a high target?

We depend too much on fossil fuels and particularly on foreign sources of fossil fuels. We would not allow the places overseas that we buy oil and gas from to build our ships, planes or ground vehicles. Yet we give them a say on whether those vehicles run, those ships sail, or those aircraft fly. We give them a say in a couple of ways: one is by supply and the other is by price shocks. Every time the price of a barrel of oil goes up a dollar it costs the navy $30 million.

Is fossil-fuel dependence your only motive?

We are also doing this to be better war fighters. A navy ship is at its most vulnerable when refuelling. The USS Cole was refuelling in the port of Aden in Yemen when it was attacked in 2000. It is incredibly hard for the Marine Corps to get a gallon of gasoline to a front-line unit. For every 50 convoys, a marine is killed or wounded guarding that convoy.

The 3rd Battalion 5th Marines deployed at Sangin, Afghanistan, are using alternative energy sources. A couple of their forward combat bases use no fossil fuels, just solar power. One of the marine foot patrols uses roll-up solar blankets to generate power for their radios and GPS. It saves them hauling 700 pounds of batteries.

You announced the energy target in 2009. What have you achieved so far?

We’ve made a good bit of progress, though we started with a built-in advantage. We already get 17 per cent of our energy from nuclear power. All our aircraft carriers and submarines are nuclear. But we have launched our first hybrid ship, the USS Makin Island, which has an electric drive for speeds under 12 knots (22 kilometres per hour) and a normal diesel engine for higher speeds. On its first voyage around South America, from Mississippi to California, it saved almost $2 million in fuel costs. The navy’s China Lake base in California is giving energy back to the grid because it runs on geothermal energy.

Does the navy use biofuels?

We have already flown an F18 Hornet on a mixture of biofuel and aviation gas at 1.7 times the speed of sound, and the aircraft didn’t know the difference. We’ve used different types of biofuels in our helicopters and our swift boats. One requirement we have for biofuels is that they cannot take any land out of food production, so we can’t go down the road of corn-based ethanol. We are looking at algae-based biofuels and other types that look promising but are still in the R&D phase.

Will the navy need any new technology to meet the 2020 goal?

I think we could reach that goal with current technology if it is deployed at scale.

See gallery: “US fighting machine going green“

Profile Raymond Mabus is US Secretary of the Navy, in charge of the navy and Marine Corps and an annual budget of $150 billion. He has served as governor of Mississippi and ambassador to Saudi Arabia. To see a gallery of the US navy’s carbon-saving innovations go to: bit.ly/fEYBI5