Navy Can’t Prove That Green Energy Projects Save Money

The U.S. Navy handed out a $334 million contract for solar power without having a good way to determine whether the project would be cost effective. The Pentagon’s inspector general recently audited three of the Navy’s large-scale renewable energy projects at installations supervised by the U.S. Pacific Command, finding that federal employees tasked with carrying out cost-effectiveness assessments of these projects did not have the documentation to back up their calculations or conclusions. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus made alternative energy a priority in 2009, directing the service to generate half of its total energy from alternative sources by 2020. In 2014, Mabus established an office to identify cost-effective projects for Navy installations to help achieve the service’s energy goals. Measures to determine the cost savings of these projects have been unreliable due to shortcomings in the Navy’s guidance for evaluating the projects, according to the audit. In one case, the Navy awarded a $334.1 million, 25-year contract for solar power at 14 military sites in Hawaii with inadequate procedures for determining that the project was cost effective. The company broke ground on the project in July 2014, but it has yet to generate solar power...more