US Military Aims to Be Greener

When it comes to calculations for fuel and electricity for its troops, the American defense secretary would surely like to dispense with the numbers: The Pentagon estimates expenses of $150 billion over the next decade. The U.S. military is the world’s largest consumer of energy. In 2010 alone, the U.S. armed forces used 125 million barrels of oil. In comparison, all of Germany used about 911 million barrels that year, according to the CIA Factbook.

Yet dependency on oil leaves one open to attack. In 2007, attacks on tanker trucks in Afghanistan accounted for more than a third of Army incidents; in Iraq it was 12 percent.

That has led to a new and remarkable alliance: From now on, the U.S. eco-lobby and the military will be cooperating. The U.S. Army aims to increase its share of green energy to around 25 percent by 2025. For this they will receive approximately $7 billion. The military will use these funds to finance the development of more powerful power transformers, more efficient batteries and solar parks.

So what should we think about these developments? Klaus Topfer, former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program, regularly states that climate policy is, above all, peace policy. With these reports, that message takes on a whole new meaning.