GOP blocks US Military from using alternative fuels.

[SirNitram]

Link

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee effectively banned the department from buying alternative fuels or building facilities to manufacture it.

Those measures were rolled into the committee's draft of the fiscal 2013 defense budget bill approved on Thursday. Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said he hopes to have the bill brought to the full Senate no later than July.

While committee members did strike a measure that would have absolved DOD from following certain, federally mandated alternative-fuel requirements, they took direct aim at a key Navy and Air Force initiative to begin running American fighter jets and warships on biofuels.

Specifically, it blocks DOD from spending any FY 13 dollars toward the "production or purchase of an alternative fuel if the cost of producing or purchasing the alternative fuel exceeds the cost of traditional fossil fuel," according to the Senate draft.

The Senate mark also blocks the Pentagon planning, designing or constructing "a biofuels refinery or any other facility or infrastructure used to refine biofuels," the Senate bill states.

However, the Senate bill states that DOD can use biofuel-fossil-fuel blends in their weapon systems if the department completes an "engine or fleet certification" showing those systems can run on blended fuels.

Both biofuel measures passed the committee by a one-vote margin.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) crossed party lines and voted against the failed measure to exclude DOD from federal alternative fuel requirements. But she did not vote on the biofuel language.

A Collins spokesman said she had to miss the vote to speak with the commander of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine after the USS Miami fire. He said Collins would support biofuels if the issue comes up on the Senate floor.

Military officials had argued that transitioning the U.S. military to alternative sources of fuel, such as biofuels, would save the Pentagon millions in energy costs.

The price DOD has paid to keep its vast arsenal rolling through over a decade of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan has become one of the biggest cost drivers in DOD's increasingly shrinking budgets.

President Obama linked clean-energy initiatives to national security requirements during his State of the Union speech in January. Biofuel development has become a critical piece of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus's long-term strategy for the sea service.

"I think that we cannot afford not to do this," Mabus warned the Senate in March. "We cannot afford to be dependent on a worldwide commodity that has the price spikes and the price shocks that we have."

But Republican lawmakers in both chambers took every opportunity to hammer away at Mabus and the White House on those plans during defense budget hearings earlier this year.

In March, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned the Navy's effort would end in another "Solyndra situation," referring to now-bankrupt solar energy company into which the White House sank $535 million in loan guarantees.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), a member of the House Armed Services subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, took Mabus to task in February over the service’s plans.

At the time, Forbes argued the Pentagon would be better off taking the billions it had put toward alternative energy and put it into buying more planes, tanks and ships.

“You’re not the secretary of the Energy. You’re the secretary of the Navy," he told Mabus during the hearing.

There is always more money for the military, unless they're not buying oil sufficiently, it seems.

[madd0ct0r]

there's a weird disconnect here.

the military guy says if we do this, we save millions, and the wording says you can only do it if it costs less then oil...

[Sea Skimmer]

I’m kind of not surprised that a plan to octuple fuel costs in the hope that doing so will eventually lead to such costs eventually going lower via demand stimulation (which actually requires technological breakthroughs, not economy of scale) attracted negative attention. The navy didn’t help its case by pointing out that such fuel costs were already dropping, since that suggests it actually isn’t vital to have military contracts.

Apparently the bill excludes natural gas and coal; coal to oil conversion makes vastly more sense than biofuel at the moment anyway for meeting emergency military fuel needs, and it might even be cheaper then 100 dollar a barrel crude out of hand, but some separate much older laws ban such conversion plants unless they emits less net CO2 then burning light crude.

[Zaune]

Well, I suppose there's no point in buying all these fancy high-tech toys if they don't have an excuse to use 'em...

[Sea Skimmer]

You could also make the argument that ensuring a military fuel supply over a civilian one is pointless and militaristic.

[HMS Conqueror]

Specifically, it blocks DOD from spending any FY 13 dollars toward the "production or purchase of an alternative fuel if the cost of producing or purchasing the alternative fuel exceeds the cost of traditional fossil fuel," according to the Senate draft.

Ah, well that is quite a different thing from the title. They are saying that the fuel should not be procured for political purposes despite being worse, but could be if oil scarcity made biofuel cheaper than drilled oil.

[Zixinus]

It would be worth experimenting with at least. There is wisdom in adapting your military to use fuels that your country can make (does the US even have oil in it anymore? within borders I mean).

On the other hand, I can understand the military to not want to get involved in the energy-politics.

[Irbis]

Ah, well that is quite a different thing from the title. They are saying that the fuel should not be procured for political purposes despite being worse, but could be if oil scarcity made biofuel cheaper than drilled oil.

I read it completely differently, given this part:

"I think that we cannot afford not to do this," Mabus warned the Senate in March. "We cannot afford to be dependent on a worldwide commodity that has the price spikes and the price shocks that we have."

And:

The Senate mark also blocks the Pentagon planning, designing or constructing "a biofuels refinery or any other facility or infrastructure used to refine biofuels," the Senate bill states.

It looks as if military planners would like to build biofuels refinery and infrastructure to keep the US Army insulated from the price shocks, 'turning it on' when a crisis starts, yet, as usual, GoP protesting these suspicious Euro-commie anti-nonexistent Climate Change measures blocks it because its not American Way™. Of course, when, say, shooting in Hormuz Strait starts, sudden doubling of fuel price and consequently costs of running American War Machine™ will be entirely Obama's fault, evil crypto-muslim he is.

Then, there is little issue of paying home companies for biofuels, instead of helping to prop up Saudis and Persians, which could even justify overpaying a bit, but GoP sits in pocket of oil industry and cares little for common peons anyway.

[Mr Bean]

There is one serious issue with biofuels and that is they don't scale well. IE if my tank needs 100 galleons every 200 miles then I need a whole lot of biofuel to maintain thousands of tanks in any kind of combat situation. Switching the US military over to biofuels is frankly impossible unless we have a second America sided Continent ready to go to do nothing but plant and harvest the biomass needed. In War as so many armies have discovered since the start of the last century the fuel demands for the military as massive. We are already at the point where we pick and choice our wars in part based on the oil reserves of the target nation.

So while I oppose this bill in practice it's not because I think Biofuels and the military go together. If anything they don't make any kind of sense... but forbidding the military not to look into any avenue of research is a great mistake because as history has show, give the military a budget and a goal and they will produce something which can be great for the rest of the world.

[Sea Skimmer]

The military wanted most of the money to go to algae oil precisely because we don't have to plant it, it could be grown in giant plastic bags in the desert sun and would not compete with anything else for space.

[Winston Blake]

there's a weird disconnect here.

the military guy says if we do this, we save millions, and the wording says you can only do it if it costs less then oil...

'Costs less' could mean a lot of things. If you include the building of biofuel infrastructure in an annual budget, then the average cost per litre-of-biofuel-consumed is going to be very high for the first few years. Then on the other side of it, if biofuel consumption is rolled out slowly, the small amount being consumed in the beginning will itself tend to drive up the average cost during that period. So even if the ongoing / long-term costs would have favoured investing in biofuels now, it could be delayed indefinitely, by a seemingly-reasonable demand: that 'the new thing not be more expensive than the current thing' (doesn't seem to apply to fighter prices).

[Pendleton]

The military wanted most of the money to go to algae oil precisely because we don't have to plant it, it could be grown in giant plastic bags in the desert sun and would not compete with anything else for space.

It's been a few years, but most of the start-ups in this area I recall as having many issues with UV damage to the plastic containers used. I think Solix was one that worked with DARPA on this. There were also rumblings about the thermodynamics of the system, even if it may have turned out cost competitive in the future.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yes they have problems with the containers but I'd be amazed if that can't be solved, cost could be an issue though. They also have a problem that the yield per acre is just not that high, and while its gone up something like x10 from the earliest trials they need it to be three of four times higher then it is now to be reasonably economical. Otherwise its just too many containers, too much pumping ect..

[SpaceMarine93]

Oh dear lord, nice going, GOP...

Okay, how quickly can anyone bring this to the Supreme Court?

[Simon_Jester]

[Stares incredulously at IndrickBoreale93]

"OH MY GOD A BAD MILITARY PROCUREMENT DECISION FOR NEXT YEAR! NO! NOOOO! MY CIVIL LIBERTIES ARE BEING VIOLATED! I DEMAND AN APPEAL IN COURT! JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED! YOU ROTTEN BASTARDS!!!!"

You silly little man. You see something that affects the Defense Department's budget for one fiscal year and you're talking Supreme Court challenges? Do you even have any idea how the American government works, or what the Supreme Court is for?

Every time you open your mouth in this forum, stupidity comes out. Seriously, I can't understand why you don't just shut up. It's ridiculous.

[Lonestar]

Oh dear lord, nice going, GOP...

Okay, how quickly can anyone bring this to the Supreme Court?

...Why would it go before the supreme court?

[Mr Bean]

,,,,Why would it go before the supreme court?

Because it violates the military's right to... cost savings?

[Lonestar]

It doesn't though.

[Lord Revan]

Oh dear lord, nice going, GOP...

Okay, how quickly can anyone bring this to the Supreme Court?

,,,,Why would it go before the supreme court?

beats me but then I'm not a citizen of the United States of America, so my knowlage of your court systems is limited to say the least

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the first rule of the American court system is that IndrickBoreale93 is wrong and dumb.

The second rule is that the courts can block government policy, but (basically) only if someone can either show:

1) That it violates due process rights: it discriminates, it is an ex post facto law or otherwise an invalid law, and so on. Basically if there's some screwy gimmick that renders the law null and void, or if it's an administrative policy violates "meta-law" about what policies the administration can enact.

or

2) It violates some part of the Constitution. For example, someone might argue that a congressional bill mandating that people buy insurance is unconstitutional because that's a power the Constitution doesn't give Congress. I might disagree with that, but it's not totally nuts, it's something a sane person might want to challenge in court for whatever reason and that a sane court might hear.

Pursuant to the first rule (Indrick is wrong and dumb), the US courts definitely DO NOT hear cases where some idiot charges in bellowing about how the government has set up a bad policy. The courts don't set policy in the first place- they just rule on the legality of government actions. It's not illegal for the government to make a mistake, and it's certainly not the courts' place to rule that the elected government is making policy mistakes.

[Irbis]

There is one serious issue with biofuels and that is they don't scale well. IE if my tank needs 100 galleons every 200 miles then I need a whole lot of biofuel to maintain thousands of tanks in any kind of combat situation. Switching the US military over to biofuels is frankly impossible unless we have a second America sided Continent ready to go to do nothing but plant and harvest the biomass needed.

Yes, they don't scale well. Now. But research (especially algae fuels) promises to make them much more viable. Still, that's not the issue here. The issue here is, what US Army Commander looking for energy security is supposed to do? He sets realistic goal, say, biofuels produced locally supplying 20% of army operations on US soil. Where to get that fuel? Build refinery so that military can produce it in wartime? Oops, bill forbids that. Give DARPA grants for biofuel research? Nope. Verboten. So, state approach doesn't work.

How about public one? Buy it from producers? But you can only buy them if they're cheaper. What if price of fuel spikes down for a few months? You can't tidy the producers over, you can only watch how they scale down production and fire workers because they can't sell their fuel. Or, they never invest into biofuels at all, too risky for them. Or stay at inefficient 1st gen biofuels because they can't afford R&D. Or... Any number of other issues that crops up, while Iran and Saudi Arabia hold USA by the throat with ability to make Army operation prohibitively expensive by starting some trouble, with no cushion available to USA to call their bluff if need arises. That's some great planning right there.

Seriously, this bill makes about as much sense as bill telling US Navy to buy carriers, but, to make their operating cheaper, only starting to procure planes, missiles and training pilots when the war starts, after all, no one needs them in peacetime, right?