From Solar to Second-Life Batteries: Why the Navy Leads the US Government in Clean Energy Deployment

The Navy quickly adopted clean energy as a better way to fulfill its mission—leading to massive solar procurements, used submarine battery storage projects and microgrids on bases.

It's impossible to say which arm of the federal government has done the most to advance clean energy. The Department of Energy has played an invaluable role inincubating technologies and bringing costs down. The White House has driven change through executive actions like the Clean Power Plan. And the State Department negotiated the Paris agreement to curb global warming through greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

The military has stepped up its promotion of renewables too -- particularly the Navy.

Last week, the Navy inaugurated the 150-megawatt AC (210-megawatt DC) Mesquite 3solar farm in Arizona, which will power about one-third of the electrical load at 14 California naval bases. It's the largest-ever federal procurement of solar power. And that's just the latest update on the way to installing 1 gigawatt of clean energy capacity by 2020.

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