Embracing the shift from fossil to biofuels, Blue Angles fly green – exploding skyward in an eco-friendly aeronautical display.
The squadron of military jetfighters replacing petroleum-based fuel with a 50/50 blend using biofuel from processed vegetable matter. Proving power and performance need not suffer using plant-based fuel over petroleum in order to preserve the planet!
In a statement to the Washington Post Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said, “The main reason we’re moving toward alternative fuels in the Navy and the Marine Corps is to make us better war fighters.”
The Pentagon is the nation’s largest energy consumer with eighty percent of the military’s energy provided by oil. Using renewable energy like biofuels, and solar can reduce their enormous energy costs, and will continue to do so as alternative energy becomes more cost competitive. From 2006 to 2009 the Pentagon increased their spending on renewable energy by 300 percent.
Moving away from petroleum means the military could save tens of millions of dollars each year. Every time the cost a gallon of gasoline rises one dollar, they wind up paying an extra $30 million a year.
The military has aggressive clean energy goals. By 2015 they want to cut their fossil fuel use in non-combat vehicles by fifty percent. Mabus has spent the month of August doing at least three media events about the shift in energy sourcing for the military. Now if anyone tells you clean energy is for pansies and treehuggers, tell them to go talk to the Navy and Marines.
