US needs defense against military biofuel adventures

Dec. 10, 2012
The US Senate has shirked responsibility by supporting biofuel boondoggles by the military.

The US Senate has shirked responsibility by supporting biofuel boondoggles by the military.

The Constitution established civilian oversight of the military partly to protect the public from expensive misadventures undertaken in the guise of security. A plan by the Navy to meets half its nonnuclear fuel needs with biofuels by 2020 fits that category.

Navy Sec. Ray Mabus says reliance on biofuels would insulate his service from oil-price shocks. He needs a lesson in energy economics.

Paying eight times the market level for fuel—as the Navy did this year with its "great green fleet" demonstration—is very costly insurance against oil-price variation. And someone should tell Mabus and his underlings that prices of biofuels gyrate, too.

Congress is supposed to resist the waste of public money. Instead, the Senate on Nov. 28 cut from the National Defense Authorization Act two measures preventing military dalliances with exotic energy.

It axed a limit on Department of Defense spending on fuels costing more than fossil fuels and a prohibition against DOD funding of biofuel-facility construction.

Opponents of those measures say stopping military experimentation with biofuels will discourage investment in alternative energy. So when did that become a concern of the American war machine?

Biofuels development is not and should never be a military activity. Spending by the military on biofuels instead of on the tools and tactics of warfare is worse than inappropriate. It's dangerous.

Especially while budgets are being cut, the military should focus spending on activities that contribute to national defense. Deliberate overspending for fuel does quite the opposite. And deliberate overspending motivated by hope that the fuel will someday make economic sense is a witless gamble.

The military has to work within budgets. It has to concentrate on its mission. Money spent making fleets green is money not spent enabling fleets to fight their best.

By not reining in military ambition, the Senate promoted waste and hurt national security. In other words, it failed.