Navy brass put forward climate plan, citing threats to Parris Island, San Diego bases

WASHINGTON: Following the lead of the other services and the broader Pentagon, the Navy has published a new climate action strategy that seizes upon the coming years as a time for “decisive action” to quantifiably reduce the service’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

“2030 is the marker that we laid down initially because the scientific community and others have said that this is the decade of decisive action and so we’re taking that very seriously,” Meredith Berger, the service’s senior civilian overseeing energy, installations and environment, told reporters on Monday.

The strategy document cites a handful of specific initiatives such as the electrification of ground vehicles, alternative propulsion systems for Navy ships and base infrastructure changes to make them resilient against natural disasters. It also states the service will immediately begin a 90-day sprint to “identify initiatives to make progress towards” the goals outlined in the strategy document.

Berger, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger will speak today at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, which will declare itself a “net zero” installation. Net zero means the facility produces as much electricity from renewable energy sources as it consumes from its utility provider.

The new document, dubbed “Climate Action 2030”, comes days after reports of Defense Department officials saying the Marine Corps’ storied East Coast training grounds, Parris Island in South Carolina, could be mostly flooded by 2099.

“Another area that we identified as being highly impacted is San Diego. We see a lot of impacts on the West Coast in terms of where we need to be protecting [our installations] from the impacts of climate change,” Berger said. “We’re seeing impacts of of higher temperatures [and] wildfires.”

The Navy’s announcement follows a variety of efforts by senior Pentagon leaders as well as Army officials who have put climate issues front and center of the Biden administration’s Defense Department. For example, the Army has been aggressively pursuing electric ground vehicles, Breaking Defense previously reported.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks last year hyped up future climate-related investments to come in the Pentagon’s budget requests under the Biden administration. And for its part, major industry players like BAE Systems also project that green vehicles will be part of the Pentagon’s forces.

But like everything else in the Pentagon, plans can fall by the wayside when the political winds change. During the Obama administration, the Navy touted a green initiative dubbed the “Great Green Fleet,” which focused on enabling warships to use alternative sources of energy. The initiative gained some traction under Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, but Republican skepticism meant the project was mostly sidelined under the Trump administration.

“We’re driving towards success and making sure that we are the best warfighters, and so I hope that that is not a polarizing objective, as I think everybody wants to see mission success,” Berger said when asked by Breaking Defense about the possibility her successor may not adopt the strategy. “We are looking at every way that we’re able to do that… from the very beginnings of seeing what is out there with industry to looking at research, development and acquisition to looking at quality of life to looking at impacts of health.”

“It’s really a holistic look at how we can be more efficient, more effective, decrease our dependencies and increase our warfighting capacity and capabilities,” she continued.