Whenever I’m involved in a discussion about government waste and/or the politics of bureaucratic budgeting, I undoubtedly recount a story that usually leaves people nodding in agreement or shaking their head in disbelief. The story goes like this: A friend of mine we’ll call “Rob,” whom I used to work with during my summer breaks, was coming back to Massachusetts for an unexpected late-September visit. Rob had relocated to Pensacola, Florida where he was learning how to fly jets at the Naval Flight Training School. As Rob lifted the golf clubs out of the nose of the fighter jet he had just flown from Florida to Massachusetts for a one-day visit, he knew his trip was different - and he was a little uneasy about it.
You see, Rob’s day-long visit to play golf in Massachusetts was made possible by an officer (or officers) who rightly feared that ending up with a surplus of fuel at the end of that fiscal year would slash the budget for fuel in the next. Rob’s little visit was back in the early 1990s, but with today’s skyrocketing fuel prices, and the added fuel demands of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “largest single user of petroleum products in the world” is looking for ways to use less fuel - and more types of it.
The Shreveport Times reports that the military spent $12.6 billion on jet fuel, diesel and other fuels in 2007 and rising fuel costs have the DoD asking Congress for additional funding to cover a projected shortfall. In the meantime, the Air Force has been looking for ways to offset rising fuel costs, including conservation. Col. West Anderson is the 2nd Bomb Wing’s vice commander at Barksdale AFB.
Anderson knows a thing or two about fuel consumption. A B-52 bomber has a 50,000 gallon fuel tank, when all filled up, his fleet of 60 plus B-52s hold a total of 5 million gallons of JP-8 jet fuel.
Col. Anderson says:
“We’ve been exploring fuel savings, trying to lighten the loads that we carry on day-to-day training missions, so we get better fuel economy. We’re planning our missions more efficiently so were not using as much ‘drone’ time, don’t try to spend as much high-level time, (and) condense and pack the training into a tighter schedule.”
Defense planners are also looking to alternative fuel sources and synthetic fuel blends to help cushion the impact of rising oil prices. Said Air Force Maj. Don Rhymer of the Air Force Alternative Fuels Certification Office, of the “The goal is to have every aircraft using synthetic fuel blends by 2011.” The DoD also hopes that at least 50% of this fuel will be produced domestically by 2016.
But “alternative fuel sources” and “synthetic fuel blends” are not automatically good things, as Clayton Cornell at gas2.org points out. Cornell writes:
“While synthetic fuel has the capacity to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, it could also double CO2 emissions produced by military flight[s]. At the time of this writing, synfuel is made via Fischer-Tropsch process from either coal or natural gas to produce a somewhat cleaner burning but extremely greenhouse-gas intensive product. The Air Force may be underscoring a recently hyped green image, but it seems that economic considerations are largely at play here…”
And what about those late-September Navy-sponsored New England golf getaways? The ones where the primary mission is to burn “surplus” fuel? Their days may be numbered, but there are no reductions or structural incentives for using less currently in the works.
According to Col. Anderson, “We haven’t been told that we’re going to get a reduction in our flight hours we have submitted for next year. That always could happen, but right now we have received no word that any of that is going to take place.”
Related Posts:
“Air Force Will Be Coal-Powered by 2011″
“The World’s Top Ten Military Spenders”
Photo: U.S. Air Force
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It looks like Solazyme will be making algal biodiesel for the US military, after a test-drive demonstrated the fuel’s superior cold-weather properties when compared to commercially-available biodiesel.
Former Director of Central Intelligence and Under-Secretary of the Navy R. James Woolsey tested the fuel himself by driving to the Worldwide Energy Conference & Trade Show in an unmodified 2008 Ford F450 fueled by 100% algal biodiesel.
Solazyme is a synthetic biology company using novel methods to produce algae biodiesel. I reported on the company back in January, when they made head turns with their algal-powered Mercedes at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. While the Mercedes was only powered by B20 (20% biodiesel), Solazyme was already highlighting the cold-weather benefits of their fuel. It looks like Wolfson was also impressed:
“The DoD’s requested testing of the Soladiesel fuel showed superior performance especially in terms of its cold temperature properties,” said Wolfson. “Greater performance in cold temperatures means our biodiesel and other algae-based fuels could help the military in remote northern locations like Alaska and North Dakota, as well as in hot climates, while reducing dependence on petroleum. We look forward to continuing to work with the DoD on Soladiesel and other algal based fuels, and are pleased to be presenting at the DESC conference.”
Solazyme has already been working with Chevron, after their “biodiesel feedstock development and testing agreement” was established in January. What isn’t apparent is when Solazyme’s algal biodiesel will be commercially available, and how it compares to other production methods (like the algae biodiesel facility that went online April 1st in Texas) in terms of energy balance, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.
Solazyme’s novel method grows algae in the absence of light. Since algae need light to make sugar to then make oil—which is how the organisms store energy—Solazyme just feeds them sugar, skipping the entire photosynthetic process.
While this achieves a 1000-fold increase in productivity, it has two obvious problems: no carbon is sequestered in the growing process, and it requires a source of sugar. That source is currently sugarcane, but Solazyme says cellulosic feedstocks could also be used at some future date.
I’m in contact with Solazyme now, and if more information becomes available I’ll be adding it in another post. See Solazyme’s press release here.
