By Jeff Erlichman, Public Sector Communications

It sounds a little far-fetched doesn’t it? But that’s exactly what the Navy is doing according to RADM Philip Cullom, Director, Fleet Readiness Division and Task Force Energy, USN.

“The Navy is planning to sail the ‘Great Green Fleet’,” RADM Cullom said, “in effect we are turning destroyers into Priuses.”

The Navy will demonstrate a Green Strike Group in local operations by 2012 and sail it by 2016 RADM Cullom told the audience at the November 19 AFCEA Bethesda Chapter Energy and the Environment IT Day.

The Strike Group will consist of nuclear ships, surface combatants using biofuels with hybrid electric power systems and aircraft flying on biofuels.

New Task Force Energy

This month, RADM Cullom said the Chief of Naval Operations established Task Force Energy to raise visibility and awareness of energy as a strategic resource and optimize energy considerations in budgeting and acquisition.

The Task Force will also recommend Navy-wide energy conservation, environmental stewardship, and alternative energy strategies.

“Energy poses geopolitical, economic, and environmental challenges that call for aggressive technology and policy changes,” said RADM Cullom. “The Navy’s strategy is all about managing energy security and securing combat capability.”

The new Energy Strategy is built on a foundation that stresses Environmental Stewardship and the need for the Navy to reduce its carbon footprint. The goal is to have “secure, sufficient, reliable and sustainable energy” said RADM Cullom.

This means reducing tactical fuel consumption while increasing tactical fuel efficiency and the use of alternative fuels. On shore it means reducing energy consumption and increasing energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources.

As with all endeavors, being green also has its economic plusses. The Navy saw its fuel costs go from $1.2 billion to $5.1 billion in 2008 because of the increased price of oil. Thus the Navy is striving to make all of its tactical and shore operations as efficient as possible.

RADM Cullom said to increase alternative energy use ashore, by 2020, the Navy will produce at least 50 percent of shore-based energy requirements from alternative sources including solar, wind, ocean and geothermal; and 50 percent of total Navy-wide energy consumption will come from alternative sources.

To do that the Navy has issued new requirements for the acquisition process including mandatory evaluation factors to be used when awarding contracts for platforms, weapon systems, and building. Requirements include lifecycle energy costs, fully-burdened cost of fuel and the contractor energy footprint.

Learn more and download RADM Cullom's presentation at the AFCEA Bethesda Chapter website.

RADM Philip Cullom, Director, Fleet Readiness Division and Task Force Energy, U.S. Navy made his comments during his keynote at the AFCEA Bethesda Chapter Energy and the Environment IT Day on November 19, 2009.

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When you visit Yellowstone National Park, you are experiencing one of the most spectacular environments on Earth. At the same time, as you eat and drive, you leave your carbon footprint.

While you are eating your burger and fries and taking in the vistas, behind the scenes, keeping the landscape spectacular for you and me are numerous public/private partnerships and organizations such as the Yellowstone Park Foundation (www.ypf.org).

One important partner you don’t often hear much about are the concessioners that have “incorporated high environmental standards into their operations”. Yes, they profit, but at the same time they are “setting an example by protecting not only NPS sites but also the land and environment beyond their borders”.

The quotes above are not mine; they are the words of the National Park Service in its announcement of its 2009 Environmental Achievement Awards on September 14.

I was in Yellowstone when those awards were announced. During my visit, I got to talk with Beth Pratt of Xanterra Parks & Resorts -- one of the 2009 NPS Environmental Achievement Award winners.

According to the NPS, “at Yellowstone, Xanterra cut emissions of greenhouse gases and conserved energy by supplying used cooking oil from the company’s eateries to run boilers at its hotels. The cooking oil replaced petroleum-based diesel fuel in the heating of the hotels.”

Boiling In Oil

“I’m lucky that my personal passion and profession coincide,” Pratt told me. “I think what you are seeing with the parks, especially on our public lands, is that climate change, pollution are threats happening now so sustainability isn’t just a nice thing to do; the survival of these parks is contingent on us putting in these sustainability initiatives.”

Pratt told me prior to joining Xanterra, she was vice-president of the non-profit Yosemite Association. She made the leap because Xanterra was serious about their environmental commitment.

So serious that for some environmental programs, Xanterra and one of their competitors – Delaware North -- work together or as Pratt described it’s “like McDonalds and Burger King sitting down at the same table and saying, ‘right what are we going to do cooperatively here.’ So I think that speaks to that we all love this place.”

10,000 Gallons of Oil

Pratt described how the Xanterra designed, tested and put in the equipment to allow them to burn all of their used cooking oil from their facilities in their boilers to heat the historic hotels.

“We generate about 10,000 gallons of cooking oil a year across Yellowstone; so that’s 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel we don’t have to burn now, so it saves us money, it saves us 10,000 gallons times whatever the going rate of diesel fuel is, but it reduces our greenhouse gases emissions by almost 200,000 lbs. a year.”

Xanterra also doesn’t have to pay to transport the oil or to recycle the cooking oil off site. Plus they transcend competition and work with Delaware North, who also burns cooking oil to take to take their oil for free and burn it.

It’s a win-win said Pratt who described it as a “beautiful closed loop” system. You gather all cooking oil waste from French Fries and instead of having to pay for it to be shipped away, you reengineered your heating boilers to be able to take that; so one fuel becomes another fuel.

“We generate it here and it’s burned here. No waste. The cooking oil is injected into the boiler straight, you don’t have to do any jiggering with it,” Pratt explained.

“All we have to do is store it in bins that keep the cooking oil at a certain temperature to keep the viscosity up. That’s really all we have to do with it. We are going to install this at three locations. Right now it’s in Mammoth and we are going to install it at Old Faithful and the Canyon,” added Pratt.

Learn more about what Xanterra does at www.xanterra.com.