Just the Thing to Do When Money’s Tight
From an article in the Washington Times:
“In March, Gevo entered into a contract with the Defense Logistics Agency to supply the U.S. Army with 3,650 gallons of renewable jet fuel to be delivered by the second quarter of 2013,” Gevo announced this week in its first quarter financial report. “This initial order may be increased by 12,500 gallons. All shipments will be at a fixed price of $59 per gallon during the initial testing phase. These shipments are in addition to the renewable jet fuel supplied to the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and the U.S. Navy (USN).”
Conventional JP-8 jet fuel costs $3.73 a gallon, according to the Defense Logistics Agency.
Yes, you’re reading that correctly. During the financial squeeze imposed by sequestration, DoD is going to spend up to $952,000+ to buy something “green” when they could buy the conventional equivalent from standard commercial sources for just over $62,000.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "Your Tax Dollars At Work"
And yet Division is scrambling to find money for jumps. And my son has to yell, “Bang, bang, bang” on field exercises. I asked him what it’s like being in a Stryker battalion that does more foot marches than an Airborne battalion.
Just like at a time of financial trouble, the DoD decided to prop up the administration’s licking of GM asshole by purchasing a bunch of Chevy Volts at the bargain price of $40K each. Because we really NEED a green military right now at the expense of financial sense. :-\
Lousy pissant m$&#&*$^$#ers!
What the F is “Renewable” jet fuel?
Do the jets have big bags strapped onto the back to catch all that expended fuel so it can be re-used? 😉
martinjmpr: I’m pretty sure they’re talking about jet fuel from renewable sources, such as this:
http://www.uop.com/green-jet-fuel/
How much anyone want to bet that this “Gevo” company has ties to a certain individual residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
[…] the Washington Times via This Ain’t Hell comes this heartwarming story about how the DOD is wasting your money when they don’t have […]
I have no doubt that this is a sweetheart deal of some kind. We are cutting back on everything and now they are spending more on fuel? Yeah, I wonder which Senator was given a hooker for this deal to go through.
we’re spendng $135 mill on Syrian rebels, $250 mill in M1s and F16s for Egypt’s Moslem Brothrhood, and the State Department spends $50 mill annually rebuilding mosques… when we supposedly don’t have enough money to pay air traffic controllers or buy the military ammunition. (DHS, is, of course, a different story). And no matter what, the folks who elected this administration see nothing wrong with their logic or spending. Unfreakinbelievable. Sometimes I think we deserve whatever we get.
The only optimistic part of living in what Heinlein called “The Crazy Years” was the eventual end of ’em. But as I recall, there was an ugly period in between.
So… ‘green’ products are less expensive, are they? In what universe?
Some night, I’m going to go to sleep and when I wake up in the morning, things will be the way they used to be.
And let us not forget the Navy’s Great Green Fleet, which may be a bargain compared to the Army’s fiasco.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/19/us-usa-navy-greenfleet-idUSBRE86I0B220120719
Gotta love our Congress, paragons of intellect and giants amongst us are they
The good news is that since it’s renewable, they never have to buy fuel again.
BTW, how much does the engine modification cost for this?
kp32: if blended 50/50 with conventional fuel, it’s a “drop in” and no mod is required. It apparently saves a bit of fuel also – in a 7 hour flight, using it in one engine saved approx 20 gallons out of 1400, or about 1.5%.
http://inr.synapticdigital.com/HoneywellAerospace/ParisAirShow2011/
However, the claim of “saved 5.5 tons of CO2” in the link above is absolute BS. Saving 20 gallons of JetA or equivalent only saves about 173 lbs of fuel. JetA is chemically similar to kerosene (approximated by dodecane, C12H26). Saving 20 gallons of fuel means it only saved about 536 lbs of CO2 – not 5.5 tons.
I’m sure it’s good fuel. But somehow, I still don’t see saving 1.5% in fuel to be cost-effective at $59/gallon for the “green” stuff vice $3.73 for the conventional.
@13 I’m pretty sure there’s no engine mod required.
I’m glad to see this sort of research being done. But, yeah…if things are really so bad, let private industry take care of it and buy the cheaper stuff.
So does each service get a tax break for going green?
@Ex-PH2 – Try clicking your heels together, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”
Sorry… I should have added the /sarc
I was actually picturing some form of a perpetual fuel line circling back to reburn the same fuel over and over…
samk: agreed that research into such is worthwhile, and maybe one day it will be economically feasible. Lord knows we could do a helluva lot with waste paper/lawn waste/wood scraps/etc . . . if we could figure out a high-efficiency way to produce methanol using that as a feedstock.
But as energy-related research, it should be sponsored and funded by Energy. It shouldn’t be coming out of DoD operations and maintenance (O&M) funds.
Yeah, that sequester sure is putting the pinch on our budgets…yes, siree…
I wonder how big of a bribe (*OOPS!* Campaign Donation) Gevo gave to B. Hussein 0bama & Co. to get that sweetheart deal?
Elections have consequences, including downticket votes.
Amazing how all the IGs were fired or silenced in the first 3 months of Obama’s regime.
God, I hate politicians.
While I agree with “it should be left to the private market”, isn’t this more of an R&D effort with the goal of supplier independence with the “green” label slapped on?
Dave: don’t believe anyone said anything about leaving this kind of research to the “private market”, amigo.
This type of R&D is a reasonable thing for the Federal government to fund, for precisely the reason you identify (supplier independence) – provided a couple of conditions are met. First, it should be funded by the appropriate part of the Federal government; that’s DoE, not DoD. And second, it should be funded based on technical merit vice being used as a “political payback”. Way too much of the latter seems to be going on with respect to “green energy” programs these days.