The US Department of Defense has invested a great deal in developing alternative fuels: a new study says that greener fuels won’t give the military an advantage, but the DoD disagrees.
The DoD has set some ambitious targets for alternative fuel use; the Air Force is aiming to use 50% alternative fuel for all of its domestic flights and has financed several projects to develop bio-jet fuel.
The Navy set targets to use 50% alternative fuel across its operations by 2020. DARPA announced last year that it had managed to produce algal biofuel for $2 a gallon and was working to push this down as low as $1 a gallon. As the organization in the world that uses the largest amount of fuel (337,000 barrels a day), the DoD push for alternative fuels is one of the largest. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested, but a new study from Rand corp. says that using renewable fuels don’t give the military an advantage over using fossil fuel.
The independent study by Rand Corp makes the case that with first generation biofuel technologies it would take up 10% of farmland in the US to produce 200,000 barrels of fuel. This is just one percent of the fuel used in the US a day. The writers of the study claim that there is no advantage to the US military to use biofuel rather than petroleum based fuel, due to the intensive farming and processing needed, use of biofuels might not result in greener or cheaper fuel. However, the study acknowledges the knock on effects of technology developments might benefit the general public; a comparison was made to technology developed for space missions resulting in better miniaturization of computers.
However, the DoD disagrees with the study’s claims that there are no benefits to the military funding biofuel research. Most of the investment to date has been in food crop derived biofuel, so if these technologies are relied upon, food production will be displaced. These are the established technologies, but the DoD has also financed non-food crop derived biofuel development and some of these projects are approaching commercialization which are aiming to mitigate the problems with current technology. The higher costs of these new technologies are because they are still at the R&D stage and the DoD claims that market forces and economy of scale will bring down these prices in time; biofuel trials carried out by the Navy have decreased in cost by 50% in the last two years.
The cost and environmental benefits are not the only benefits the DoD cites; they claim that reducing US dependence on overseas oil has advantages to national security. The DoD stress that they remain committed to supporting alternative fuels despite the study and will continue to finance their development.
The DoD has set some ambitious targets for alternative fuel use; the Air Force is aiming to use 50% alternative fuel for all of its domestic flights and has financed several projects to develop bio-jet fuel.
The Navy set targets to use 50% alternative fuel across its operations by 2020. DARPA announced last year that it had managed to produce algal biofuel for $2 a gallon and was working to push this down as low as $1 a gallon. As the organization in the world that uses the largest amount of fuel (337,000 barrels a day), the DoD push for alternative fuels is one of the largest. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested, but a new study from Rand corp. says that using renewable fuels don’t give the military an advantage over using fossil fuel.
The independent study by Rand Corp makes the case that with first generation biofuel technologies it would take up 10% of farmland in the US to produce 200,000 barrels of fuel. This is just one percent of the fuel used in the US a day. The writers of the study claim that there is no advantage to the US military to use biofuel rather than petroleum based fuel, due to the intensive farming and processing needed, use of biofuels might not result in greener or cheaper fuel. However, the study acknowledges the knock on effects of technology developments might benefit the general public; a comparison was made to technology developed for space missions resulting in better miniaturization of computers.
However, the DoD disagrees with the study’s claims that there are no benefits to the military funding biofuel research. Most of the investment to date has been in food crop derived biofuel, so if these technologies are relied upon, food production will be displaced. These are the established technologies, but the DoD has also financed non-food crop derived biofuel development and some of these projects are approaching commercialization which are aiming to mitigate the problems with current technology. The higher costs of these new technologies are because they are still at the R&D stage and the DoD claims that market forces and economy of scale will bring down these prices in time; biofuel trials carried out by the Navy have decreased in cost by 50% in the last two years.
The cost and environmental benefits are not the only benefits the DoD cites; they claim that reducing US dependence on overseas oil has advantages to national security. The DoD stress that they remain committed to supporting alternative fuels despite the study and will continue to finance their development.
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