The High Cost Of Green: Navy Buying Biofuel At Four Times The Cost Of Regular Jet Fuel
Our country may be going broke, but at least we’ll be green when we’re broke. You can’t put a price tag on that.
Or maybe you can. It’s, like, $15 per gallon.
Last week, the Navy signed a contract with two biofuel companies to purchase 450,000 gallons of advanced biofuels at $12 million to assist in President Obama’s goal to establish a domestic biofuels industry and to advance it in ways that do not require Congressional approval. Of course, given the Navy’s mission, they claim to be pursuing biofuels to ensure adequate fuel in the future without relying on crude from the Middle East or other overseas sources that may be a threat to our national security. While this purchase is only a drop in the bucket compared to the Navy’s annual usage of more than 670 million gallons, their goal is to fuel a normal Navy mission with a 50-percent blend of biofuels and gasoline by 2016.
The Navy pays $26 a gallon for the biofuel and after combining it with the oil product in a 50/50 blend obtains a fuel that costs $15 per gallon. That is almost 4 times the cost of JP-5 jet fuel, which runs $3.97 per gallon. An MIT study of alternative jet fuels, conducted in association with the Navy, found that even under optimal conditions, the price of bio jet fuel would still be twice as high as the cost of the traditional jet fuel.
Government overspending on things is always a scandal. When I was a little boy I remember news stories about defense contractors selling the government hammers for $200, and toilet seats for $400, or something like that. Today there have been entire books written about the waste in programs like the “stimulus” spending spree and Medicare.
These stories make a sensation because Americans expect their money to be spent wisely, and with a certain sense of frugality. But all that goes out the window, it seems, when it comes to “green” initiatives. For instance, spending four times what we would normally for fuel is considered to be a wise investment as long as its ostensibly green.
The same goes with wind power and solar power and other sorts of biofuels. The regular rules of economics don’t apply, because it’s inherently good to be green. It doesn’t matter that the green industry cannot support itself because there is no real demand for its products. It doesn’t matter that the government’s push to green energy lowers our quality of lives by driving up the price of energy, and everything produced by energy.
It’s green, and that’s all that matters.
Tags: deficits, green energy, national debt, navy
