After being threatened the by Republican cost-cutters, the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee recently voted to continue funding the Navy’s “Great green Fleet” alternative energy program.

In 2009, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced the Navy’s “Great Green Fleet” initiative with the goals of decreasing the Navy’s consumption of energy, decreasing its reliance on foreign sources of oil, and significantly increasing its use of alternative energy.  In July of this year, the Republican Congress attempted to sink the “Great Green Fleet,” declaring it wasteful and too expensive. Secretary Ray Mabus countered calling it vital for the military’s energy security.  The experimental bio-fuels being developed in the program cost roughly $26 per gallon as compared to the less than $4 that the Navy often spends for fuel.

Despite the opposition, the Navy demonstrated the use of bio-fuels at RIMPAC, (Rim of the Pacific Exercise,) “the world’s largest naval exercise, which takes place biannually off the coast of Hawaii. Squadrons of F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets, an SH60-Seahawk helicopter, E-2 Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft and other planes took off from the deck of the USS Nimitz, all powered by a biofuel blend, demonstrating, for the first time, biofuels in action at sea.”

The battle over funding the project is not over.  Nevertheless, yesterday it was revealed that one of the program’s most vociferous critics, Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, previously was instrumental in securing federal funds to develop renewable fuels for a firm in his home state.

While the biofuels under development currently cost more than conventional fuel, they are expected to drop in price once put into larger production. As a point of comparison, the Navy is currently spending $7 billions dollars each on the latest destroyers and $14 billion on a single aircraft carrier.