I’ve been writing about Peak Oil a bit lately, a lot more than I used to. It seems that it’s becoming a more and more discussed topic. And while you might associate Peak Oil with fringe, far-left liberals, some of the most hard-hitting reports are actually coming from military think tanks.
I covered a very serious German military think tank report on Peak Oil recently, and now there’s a report out by a U.S. military think tank on the topic (combined with a few other related topics).
The non-partisan Center for a New American Security (CNAS) found, in a report it released a couple weeks ago, that the U.S. military should stop using oil by 2040 due to Peak Oil, accelerated global climate change, and other national security risks. It also found that our military was capable of doing so.
You probably associate the military more with wars centered around oil and don’t give much thought to the amount of oil the military uses, but it is a ton. Actually, to be more precise, it is millions upon millions of barrels.
“In 2006 alone, the Pentagon bought 110 million barrels of oil and 3.8 billion kilowatts of electricity. To put that in perspective, it’s about what the entire world uses each day,” Jess Leber of Change.org writes.
The report above found that 77% of U.S. military energy supply is from oil.
So, in an ironic twist, one of the best things the U.S. military can do to help national security is cut its own reliance on oil from unfriendly foreign countries.
Luckily, the U.S. military seems to be making many strides forward in its own operations and use. Tina is sort of our designated writer on such topics and seems to write another news story about the military greening its energy supply once or twice a month. Here are a few recent ones in case you missed them:
- U.S. Military Captures Magnetic Power to Save Energy on Lighting
- U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Get First Ever Grid-Connected Wave Energy
- U.S. Military Vaults into Clean Energy Future Despite Fossil Fuel Lobby
- U.S. Military is Developing Smart Microgrids with Solar Power
- National Energy Awareness Month Kicks off with a Bang as Military Fuel Convoy is Torched in Pakistan
And if the U.S. can get off of oil by 2040, doesn’t it seem that the rest of the nation could do better than 15% renewable energy by 2021. I guess that’s the difference between a dysfunctional democracy and the military that tries to protect it.
Photo Credit: Dunechaser via flickr
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