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Report: Economic benefits of military biofuels
A new report says the military’s growing use of biofuels will generate at least $10 Billion in economic activity and create more than 14-thousand jobs by 2020. The Environmental Entrepreneurs group (E2) commissioned an energy consulting firm for the study, based on biofuels goals of the U.S. Department of Defense (D.O.D) to use as much as 50% biofuels in the Navy and the Air Force by 2022.
E2 co-founder Nicole Lederer says the report underscores the great importance for Congress to remove barriers to the military biofuels program.
“The report underscores the significance of D.O.D.’s market signal to the biofuels industry in helping it to reach scale and achieve broad commercialization,” Lederer tells reporters, “And, it demonstrates the geographically widespread economic growth and job generation that will result from DOD’s investment in this space over the next eight years.”
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds the Department of Defense, has passed out of the Senate Armed Services Committee with amendments (sponsored by Senators Jim Inhofe and John McCain) to restrict the Defense department’s biofuels activity. The measure is expected to go before the full Senate in the coming weeks.
Retired Vice Admiral Denny McGinn – president of the American Council on Renewable Energy – says the military views the nation’s dependence on foreign oil as a three-pronged threat, “They have to look over the horizon, the time horizon – five, 10, 20 years out. What they have concluded, unanimously, is that we have a strategic threat in terms of energy security, economic security and, in many dimensions, environmental security,” says McGinn.
McGinn says the military and national goals are to use diversified technologies and feedstocks – including crop waste – to widen biofuels production and use – making it “mission critical.”
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