The Next Cuban Gristle Crisis: US Navy Warship Powered by Beef Fat
24th January 2016
The USS Stockdale, a guided-missile-launching destroyer, has set sail powered by an unusual fuel – waste beef fat.
The ship, deployed this week in the USS John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, is part of the Navy’s Great Green Fleet initiative, which is trying to make swabbies more environmentally friendly by using alternative fuels for power.
“The Navy’s use of renewable energy in the Great Green Fleet represents its ability to diversify its energy sources, and also our nation’s ability to take what would be a waste product and create homegrown, clean, advanced biofuels to support a variety of transportation needs,” said US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
“Today’s deployment proves that America is on its way to a secure, clean energy future, where both defense and commercial transportation can be fueled by our own hardworking farmers and ranchers, reduce landfill waste and bring manufacturing jobs back to rural America.”
This might sound like environmentalism gone mad but don’t have a cow, man, because there’s method to the Navy’s madness. The beef fat was purchased from ranchers in the Midwest at competitive rates, Vilsack said, and rendered into fuel by a California company at a cost of $2.05 per gallon.