"The US Navy has committed to having half of its energy needs provided by non-fossil fuel sources by 2020 for its combat ships, aircraft and land vehicles."
Another comparison I will add: the Air Force is the biggest consumer of fossil fuels in the whole U.S military.
Australian Defence will have a lot of work ahead of them if pressed to burn less fossil fuel.
Clean energy efforts are useful but it won't make up for the frightful fuel consumption of some of our current and future weapons systems planned by Australian Defence.
As an aside for force structure planning: Australia will never have credible weapons systems that can take on high end threats. So any green force structure has to be based around the idea of second tier-threat war fighting.
For fossil fuel consumption the path ahead does not look good.
To illustrate, we just retired the F-111 for no valid reason. This aircraft had distance and persistence and growth room for more modern air-to-ground weapons. This aircraft would use less or no air-to-air refueling assets to perform its mission. Traditional fighter aircraft cannot beat the F-111 for its utility.
(click image to make larger-source: http://www.ausairpower.net)
How about fighter aircraft? Australia has scores of second-tier, short range fighters that burn a lot of fuel. The F-18 family of fighter aircraft are the shortest range in their class and will require more tanker gas. Fuel is always more expensive (per liter/gallon) when air refueling.
Australia doesn't need air warfare destroyers and large amphibious ships. These ships will burn more fuel than frigates and smaller (scalable) amphibious transports.
Australia acquired used M-1 tanks from the U.S.; to use for what I am not sure. This particular class of tank with its turbine engine burns up fuel at an alarming rate.
The helicopter road map for Defence (If it is big, bloated, under-tested, risky and slow to field to the warfighter it must be good) also is hard to take seriously in the area of consuming less fossil fuel.
I am not convinced that--besides platitude and side-show--Australian Defence has a handle on its fossil fuel use. Any claims to be more fuel efficient will need significant proof.
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This bit posted in another forum earlier today regarding assuring national fuel security for Australia.
'For years, we have been flogging LNG at peppercorn prices to offshore interests and exploitation of Australia's gas reserves has now become a frenzy, to the foreseeable detriment of future transportation fuel security and downstream national economic interests.
Gas to liquids (GTL) converts natural gas/gaseous hydrocarbons into liquid fuels including diesel; as Royal Dutch Shell does in Malaysia and SASOL and Shell both do in Qatar.
Australia is now increasingly dependent on imported distillate and likely moreso, as local refining capacity seems destined to decline. We will thus be at the mercy of offshore refiners, some of whom will be accessing low cost LNG from Australia.
Considering shrinking world oil reserves, think of the potential economic benefits if we conserved our gas resources largely for production of synthetic transportation fuels. Why not then invest superannuation funding toward creation of such an industry? This could generate much more secure longer-term returns than playing the so-called balanced funds casino.
Alas; there does not seem to be any strategic vision within either of the major political parties toward assuring transportation (and defence) fuel security through prudently advantaging Australia's own natural resources in the national interest.'
I actually spoke to Martin Ferguson about this in October last year.
He is supposedly the GTL and CTL champion, and goes on about it at Industry meetings. Told me not to worry, the gas will last 500 years.????(the Goverments own Dept ABARE says68)
In addition he advised tha he had never heard of th term"Dutch Disease"
Bushranger rest easy.
I see that Caltex are talking about not only closing their refinery in Sydney, but also in Brisbane.
That will mean that Australia will have to import 50% of it's refined products.
There are several projects regarding coal to liquids under consideration. Monash/Victoria, Ambre/Qld, Altona/SA, but owned by the Chinese Govt, so you can imagine how much product will stay here, and the only one producing small amounts of Diesel in demo plant is Link Energy (UCG). Chinchilla and SA.(They have contracts with BP)
Interestingly John Howard Govt bought the license for the Syntroleum process for Australia. They were going to build a facility using North West Shelf gas,10,000 barrels a day of lubricants, but was cancelled.
Sasol has also lookd a project in the area, but has not been heard of for years.
With Australia's coal reserves especially there is great potential.
Gas tenements seem to be tied up by companies not interested in value adding, only exoporting it as LNG as fast as they can.
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