Traditionally, defence establishments have been hesitant to include climate change on the security agenda. Being focused on national security, the militaries have put a blind eye to their colossal fuel consumption. Militaries have largely been exempted from national requirements to cut emissions. Similarly, environmental activists, analysts and researchers paid little attention to military emissions, also reluctantly approaching military practices. When military responses to climate change have received attention this has often led to fears of unnecessary securitization. However, the issue of military emissions is increasingly realized on the international agenda, and significant efforts to address these emissions are now being made in the UK, the US and NATO
Military emissions
The British army emits as much CO2 as all other British ministries combined. Richard Nugee, a three-star general, put emission reduction on the British military agenda. Nugee served as an officer in the British army in Iraq, where he became convinced of the military significance of rising global temperatures. He decided to make it his personal mission to address both military emissions and new conflicts sparked by global warming: “Having really seen defence from the heart of it, I had drawn the conclusion that it was not paying any attention to climate change at all, and I wanted to change that”. Although Nugee initially faced resistance, the British Ministry of Defence has pledged to reduce its emissions to net-zero by 2050 in its Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach following a report by Nugee. The recommendations in the report are technical, and innovation is seen as the key to lowering military emissions.
Like its counterpart in the UK, the US army is a large emitter. On some counts the biggest institutional consumer of oil worldwide, the US military is responsible for 56% of all federal government emissions and 52% of its energy consumption. This could change as a result of the new Executive Order on Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs Through Federal Sustainability, signed by President Biden on December 8th 2021. The Department of Defense is included in this order, which requires it to reach net-zero emissions no later than 2050. The order includes a requirement to buy only zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) by 2035.
Erin Sikorsky, The Director of the Centre for Climate and Security (CCS) and the International Military Council on Climate and Security (IMCCS), has argued that to meet its emission goals the Defense Department will require an ‘all-hands-on-deck approach’ to drive innovation, scale up the deployment of new technologies and innovative procurement. Although the Defense Department already meets its emission goals by relying on local renewable power supplies, the bulk of the US army remains reliant on fossil fuel-consuming vehicles, airplanes and ships. As with Nugee’s approach in Britain, lowering military emissions in the US will thus require large-scale innovation.
Sustainable innovation and military capabilities
Much of the resistance against sustainable innovation inside the defence establishment has been based on the fear that environmental concerns will reduce operational capacities. Sustainability and national security are seen as a trade-off, with the former harming the latter. Nugee, however, has claimed that innovation could instead enhance military capacity: “This is not doing it for moral reasons. This is not doing it because it’s about emissions. It’s about our own capability, it’s about our ability to be the most successful and the most credible force that we can”.
One way in which sustainable innovation could improve the functioning of armies is by decreasing their dependency on fuel. In Afghanistan, for instance, many of the Taliban’s attacks were targeting convoys transporting diesel for vehicles and outposts. An army using more fuel-efficient vehicles would be less dependent on such vulnerable transports. Hybrid electric armoured vehicles would also add stealth, being harder to detect by radars than fuel-burning alternatives. The British Ministry of Defence has focused on aviation, which currently consumes two-thirds of its fuel and plans to power aircrafts with algae, alcohol or household waste. This would not only reduce emissions but also increase the army’s self-sufficiency by decreasing its reliance on fuel suppliers and transports.
Nugee further sees innovation as necessary for adapting militaries to rising global temperatures. In the Arctic, melting sea ice is amplifying strategic competition as new trade routes are emerging. This calls for the technical improvement of existing warships and the construction of new ice-breakers. In the Persian Gulf, surface-level temperatures are projected to rise sharply in the coming decades. As military ships may in the future not be able to use this warmer water to cool their engines, armies will need to innovate. Climate change thus has current and future effects on the environments in which armies operate, both of which call for technical innovation.
CCS and IMCCS director Sikorsky has pointed to similar strategic advantages of sustainable innovation in the US context. The US military domestically relies to a large degree on the electric commercial grid. The commercial grid is vulnerable to not only cyber or direct attacks by terrorists or nefarious state actors but also extreme weather events such as storms. Investments in renewable energy for the US army would thus not only decrease carbon emissions but also the vulnerability of the army’s energy supplies.
NATO
The challenges and opportunities posed by military emissions are also rising in the agenda of NATO. According to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, emissions “disappeared from the statistics, but it didn’t disappear from the atmosphere”. At COP26, Stoltenberg pledged to develop a methodology for counting military emissions, as a first step to reducing them. According to Sherri Goodman, Secretary-General of the IMCCS, and Katarina Kertysova, Policy Fellow at the European Leadership Network (ELN), Wilson Centre Global Fellow and member of the NATO 2030 Young Leaders Group, NATO has several important assets through which it could contribute to international climate efforts. NATO has a global network of partners and serves as a platform for sharing expertise and lessons learned. Moreover, NATO already has a long track record in many humanitarian assistance and natural disaster response, and could help set climate standards for future missions. As with the UK and US militaries, NATO could operationally benefit from sustainable innovation aimed at decarbonization. The increasing realization of the benefits of sustainability is likely to put the climate higher on the NATO agenda.
Conclusion
Sustainable innovation can improve rather than reduce the operational capacity of militaries. This could push the defence establishment to embrace innovation as an opportunity rather than to oppose it. Through reducing emissions, innovating towards self-sufficiency and adapting to new environments militaries are preparing for a changing world, with new opportunities and risks for security. This has implications for the debate on the role of the military with regard to climate change. Whereas lower military emissions would contribute to mitigating climate change, the framing of climate change as a security and military issue can exacerbate fears of unnecessary securitization. A more open debate on the hard security dimension of climate change is needed to engage the military in a meaningful way.
To find out more about the EU’s efforts to link climate change and defence, read our Policy Brief ‘Mission Probable: the EU’s efforts to green security and defence’.
To find out more about NATO’s role as a driver of climate action. Read the NATO Review article by Sherri Goodman, Secretary-General of the IMCCS, and Katarina Kertysova, Policy Fellow at the European Leadership Network (ELN).
By Douwe van der Meer