The Pentagon’s Electric Vehicle Push Doesn’t Work for Taxpayers — or the Climate
Opinion by Eric Tegler
The Department of Defense is embracing an all-in approach to acquiring a fleet of non-tactical electric vehicles to achieve “carbon neutrality,” as directed by the Biden administration. The push is part of a broader Climate Adaptation Plan promulgated in 2021, in accordance with Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” — administration policy requiring that climate considerations be an essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security.
But the Pentagon declines to answer basic questions about the negative effects of EVs, the strategic and tactical risks they present, and what acquiring them actually achieves. To parse its EV strategy, I put questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) in an email exchange.
In conjunction with other Department of Defense (DOD) groups, the OSD is working to ensure that 100 percent of the non-tactical vehicles — commercially offered cars and trucks or support vehicles for base/garrison settings — that the Pentagon acquires annually through the General Services Administration are zero-emission vehicles by 2035.
Here is some of what I learned through my communication with the OSD.
What Does DOD Hope to Gain?
Defense Department officials, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, have cited tactical benefits of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) to include silent watch (the ability to operate/move silently), reduced logistics, decreased fuel consumption and increased range. However, these don’t apply to non-tactical vehicles in a meaningful fashion. Silent watch may be useful in some battlefield scenarios, but in base and garrison settings it has little impact.
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