Carrier Strike Group 3 and its flagship, the nuclear-powered supercarrier USS John C. Stennis, will deploy to the Western Pacific area of operations. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack were expected to be on hand for the launch, according to Reuters.
Called the Great Green Fleet, the initiative was launched in 2009 by Mabus as part of an effort to boost its use of alternative fuels, improve the energy efficiency of its operations and reduce the amount of non-tactical petroleum use.
The program is named after President Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet, a convoy of destroyers that circled the globe at the beginning of the 20th century in a show of American naval strength.
“The ‘Great Green Fleet’ highlights how the Navy and Marine Corps are transforming our energy use to increase our combat capability, operational flexibility and resiliency so that we can go farther, stay longer and deliver more firepower,” Lt. Chika Onyekanne, a Navy spokesman, said in a statement.
In a video interview posted on the Navy’s Twitter account, Mabus said a shift towards greener fuels produced in the United States would only make the Navy more effective.
“It gives us a war fighting edge,” he said. “Energy can be used as a weapon. We need an American home grown source of alternative energy. We need one that is not subject to the wild price swings of conventional fuel, which are set in the world market. We need ones that can’t be used against us.”
Some Republicans have complained in recent years that the Navy should spend its limited resources on building new ships, instead of developing fuel alternatives.
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