Navy torpedoes Biden-era climate agenda to focus on lethality

The Navy will no longer pursue a zero-emissions goal instituted under the Biden administration, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced on Wednesday. 

“We need to focus on having a lethal and ready naval force, unimpeded by ideologically motivated regulations,” Phelan said in a video announcing he would rescind the Navy Climate Action 2030 Plan.

The plan had called for the Navy to use 100% emissions-free vehicles by 2035 and to use 100% carbon pollution-free electricity sources by 2030, with a 65% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions. 

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Naval installations all along the coast are threatened by rising sea levels and increased storms, Meredith Berger, the former assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment, argued at the time. 

“2030 is the marker that we laid down initially because the scientific community and others have said that this is the decade of decisive action, and so we’re taking that very seriously,” she told reporters.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth applauded Phelan’s move in a post on X: “Well done.”

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Under Biden’s Navy secretary, Carlos del Toro, the service branch produced a 32-page document deeming climate change “one of the most destabilizing forces of our time.” 

It laid out a series of climate change-related threats to the Navy: destructive storms, black flag days at or above 90 degrees Fahrenheit where strenuous training is curtailed, and strains on the energy grid as people compete for power. The document followed Biden’s own bold plan to make the U.S. economy net-zero-emissions by 2050. 

During the Obama administration, then-Navy Sec. Ray Mabus launched an effort dubbed the “Great Green Fleet,” aimed at renewable energy sources for warships. The effort was canned by the first Trump administration in 2017. 

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In February, Hegseth ordered Pentagon agencies to identify 8% of their budget that could be cut, “low-impact and low-priority” Biden-era programs, and the funding redirected to Trump priorities. 

Programs that could be on the chopping block include “so-called ‘climate change’ and other woke programs, as well as excessive bureaucracy,” according to Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses.