Key Senate subcommittee votes to continue military biofuels program

In Washington, the US Senate defense appropriations subcommittee, part of the Senate Appropriations committee, passed a $604 billion defense funding bill that will continue funding for the Navy’s Green Strike Group biofuels program. In comments to reporters, subcommittee chairman Senator Daniel Inuoye of Hawaii confirmed that the bill included continued biofuels program funding, but declined to give specifics on amounts prior to a vote by the entire Appropriations Committee on Thursday.

Biofuels opponents pushed through a measure through the Senate Armed Services Committee to curb spending on any biofuels that cost more than conventional fuels, except for testing and certification purposes, but the full Senate has yet to vote on that measure.

A Senate subcommittee approved legislation on Tuesday that continues funding for the Pentagon’s use of biofuels, a senator said, in a move pushing back against critics trying to limit outlays on programs such as the Navy’s “Great Green Fleet.”

Some biofuels funding was included in a $604 billion defense spending bill for fiscal 2013 passed by the Senate’s defense appropriations subcommittee, the panel’s chairman, Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye, told reporters.

Meanwhile, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy Tom Hicks, in an op-ed published on Wired.com, restated the “Navy’s well-known and much-publicized commitment to only purchase operational quantities of biofuel blends when they are competitive with petroleum, period. Future operational purchases of biofuel must be cost-competitive with conventional fuels. We simply cannot afford it otherwise and will not do it.”

The Hicks op-ed corrected numerous errors in an article published via Wired.com’s online Danger Room – which were also outlined in “6 Big Myths of Military Biofuels” which looked critically at Wired.com’s coverage of the topic.