In promoting the use of renewable energy, U.S. administrations have put considerable focus on the U.S. military. That’s a logical priority: The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States, and it consumes close to 80 percent of the federal government’s total. In 2009, Obama administration Navy Secretary Ray Mabus began planning for half of the U.S. Navy’s energy use to be supplied by non-fossil fuel sources by 2020—a year that came and went—and for half of the Navy’s onshore installations to have net-zero carbon emissions.
After the Trump administration abandoned these plans, U.S. President Joe Biden appointed six senior officials to the Defense Department to advance climate policy in the U.S. military. Biden’s senior climate appointee at the Pentagon, Joe Bryan, advocated for canceling the military’s national security exemption for emissions reduction. In the 2022…
