Fuel-Thirsty U.S. Navy Pledges 50% Cut in Oil Use by 2020, and More

The United States Navy is taking a big leap forward in “greening” its 50,000-strong, gas-guzzling fleet of vehicles, committing to a 50 percent cut in oil use by 2015, the Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus declared in a speech at the Naval Energy Forum.

That’s not all. Mabus said the Navy will attempt to get 50 percent of its total energy from alternative sources by 2020, including its ships, aircraft, tanks, vehicles and bases. Currently, that figure is at 17 percent.

The reason: The Navy’s imported oil addiction is socking the service with billions of dollars in losses. The Navy’s new “hybrid of the seas,” the USS Makin Island (pictured above), is expected to yield $250 million in savings over its lifetime, Mabus said. The ship has an electric motor that kicks in at low speeds. The money-saving hybrid-electric systems will soon be installed on 12 vessels.

The same is true for planes. Improving the efficiency of each aircraft by just 3 percent would save the Navy 127,000 barrels of fuel per plane, per year. That’s $15 million per aircraft, annually, at today’s fuel prices.

What it boils down is that the geopolitics of petroleum has gotten costly. The numbers don’t lie:

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