Britain’s military must embrace green innovation
“It’s not easy being green”, the signature song of Kermit the Frog, might well serve as the motto for the climate change strategy for the Ministry of Defence and the UK armed forces – said to be the most ambitious of any military in the world.
In the run-up to the COP-26 conference that the UK co-hosts with Italy in Glasgow this November, the Defence Ministry has unveiled its policy paper under the somewhat unglamorous title: “Climate Change and Sustainability Approach.” Despite the mangled grammar, it outlines an astonishingly radical path for the forces and the ministry. It fully aims to meet the 2050 zero carbon emission target – for the forces themselves and all their establishments, real estate and backup facilities.
“To get there, we have to roll double six every time,” says the author of the paper, Lt General Richard Nugee, who has just retired from the Army but continues to sit on the defence advisory committee for environment and climate change.
Among the aims are plans for the RAF to ensure its fuel for all aircraft is renewable by 2050. This means generating fuels from algae, alcohol and household waste. Army vehicles will switch over to electric power and hybrid systems – though it is unlikely that an alternative to the internal combustion or diesel engine can be found in the next 20 years to drive tanks and other heavy armoured vehicles such as self-propelled artillery and rocket launchers.
The reduction in carbon fuel dependency is desirable not only because it protects the environment – in the home territory of Britain especially – but because unstable weapons systems dependent on traditional heavy fuel resupply are increasingly vulnerable on the new battlefields. And in the new landscape of land and sea conflict, climate change is becoming a major driver for ever more unpredictable and disastrous wars.
The defence sector is a huge generator of greenhouse gases – possibly the biggest in the state sector in the UK. Altogether it generates about 3.4 million tons of carbon emissions each year. The immediate target is to cut this by two thirds. Solar farms are being built across MoD estates and bases – with a hope that they can sell back electricity to the grid in the near future. On training grounds, processes of the past 30 years are being reversed. At Otterburn, the peat is no longer being depleted and dried, and the beds are now being irrigated intensively. There is a new watering scheme for Sennybridge in Wales. “That really does change what we have been doing for 30 years,” says Nugee. “It’s going to be tough for soldiers training through moorland mud and bog. Until now, the place has been drying steadily – it’s as dry as tinder in summer, and live firing risks starting huge moorland fires.”
Fuel bills for the three services take a large chunk of their operational budgets – roughly 60 per cent for the Royal Navy, and up to 70 per cent for the RAF.
The new forms of propulsion will not enter service overnight. Some will take decades. The Army is about to get a new wheeled and armoured carrier, the Boxer. For the first part of its life it will be diesel driven and only when it is due for a midlife update – at least ten years from now – are new forms of engine likely to be robust enough for modern operations. “We are going to have to use the internal combustion engine for a while yet,” says Nugee. “It’s first a question of getting it more eco-friendly.” Electric drives are sufficient for the lighter vehicles. Similarly, he says hydrogen cell technology is promising but far from practical as yet.
One of the knottier problems is the battle of generations. The newer soldiers and commanders are very “ecology aware”, whereas their superiors are more sceptical, and worry that “green innovations” may make vehicles less efficient and can reduce performance, especially against foes using the old weaponry and technology to more powerful effect in battle.
On a wider perspective, climate change is likely to be a powerful accelerator to social instability, human disruption and an accelerant to war and conflict across some of the most vulnerable parts of the world. “This is happening both within and between states in regions important to UK security,” says Brigadier Ben Barry of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “We are already seeing this in Somalia and the Sahel.”
The challenge and threat from extreme conditions from climate change, flood, famine, pestilence and pandemic strikes a chord with the new generations joining the services. General Sir Mark Carelton-Smith, head of the British Army, has publicly stated that unless the Army’s values “embrace climate security”, it will have difficulty in recruiting young British people “who care greatly about the climate.”
For centuries and millennia even, sages and chroniclers have written of fighting for water and the other sustenances of life – bread, wheat and salt for example. Now we see water as a driver for mass migrations, friction and conflict. Water shortage is causing unrest in Iran, Yemen where the capital has very little water of its own, and in Gaza.
“We now see hundreds of thousands of people driven by hunger, heat and famine. They flee to huge camps and conurbations, where there is no work, often no shelter, and no future,” writes one of the authors of the new MoD report. “This brings explosions of frustration. Conflict enters a new dimension – the wars of despair.”