In the Navy! There is a climate action plan

TRANSCRIPT

James Lawler: [00:00:00] Welcome to Climate Now, the podcast that explores and explains the ideas, technologies, and the solutions that we’ll need to address the climate crisis and achieve a zero-emissions future. I’m James Lawler, and to sign up for our weekly newsletter, you can go to climatenow.com and enter your email address. The newsletter goes out every Tuesday morning and includes the link to the latest podcast for the week, as well as related information so you can dig deeper if you’re interested in the topics that we cover. 

For today’s episode: according to a 2019 Brown University study, the Department of Defense was the world’s single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases.

A lot of those emissions come from the Navy, which has over 480 ships, dozens of bases on both coasts, and one of the world’s largest air forces. There’s also a huge number of people who work in and for the Navy. We’ve got about 350,000 active-duty personnel in the Navy, over a 100,000 [00:01:00] reserve personnel, and close to 300,000 civilian employees.

So we’re talking about a massive organization with a huge reach and impact. As climate change shifts coastlines and causes more powerful storms, displaces people and communities, it’s becoming not only an environmental disaster, but also a security threat that the Navy and other branches of the United States armed forces are taking quite seriously.

In May of 2022, the Navy released its Climate Action 2030 report, which is a comprehensive plan to both protect its equipment and personnel from the effects of climate change and to dramatically slash the department’s annual emissions. We discussed global warming’s impact on the Navy and the department’s climate action plans with Meredith Berger, who is assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations, and the environment.

We found it interesting to note that the United States Navy, whose task is the protection of the United States’ interest, is taking climate change as seriously as they are. This is a real [00:02:00] threat to people, to infrastructure, and we were very curious to learn what exactly is in the department’s plans. But first, it’s time for our new segment, This Week in Climate News.

Emma Crow-Willard: This week in Climate News, this is Emma Crow-Willard, and I am joined by Julio Friedmann and Darren Hau. Thanks for coming on guys. 

Darren Hau: Nice to be back. 

Julio Friedmann: Always a treat. 

Darren Hau: Good to have you on the other side of the mic-

Emma Crow-Willard: Yes!

Darren Hau: Again.

Emma Crow-Willard: Good to be here. So let’s start out with the EU Parliament approval of new battery recycling regulations.

So on June 14th, the EU Parliament approved these new battery recycling rules. This is going to require mandatory declarations and labeling of carbon footprints on batteries of vehicles, and also batteries of light transport vehicles like electric scooters and e-bikes. And they’re setting essentially minimum quantities for materials recovered from spent batteries. And those quantities are 50% [00:03:00] by 2027 and 80% by 2031 for lithium, and 90% by 2027, 95% by 2031 for cobalt, copper, lead, and nickel. 

Darren Hau: Yeah. If we recall one of our first episodes with Andy Stevenson who helped start Redwood Materials, I think, you know, there’s an interesting thing to consider, which is the economics of all this.

How do we make that economic for recycling companies if we do mandate this? You know, car manufacturers and battery manufacturers generally are incentivized to reduce the input cost of their materials, right? Which is why they’re moving away from cobalt, nickel chemistries, and more towards LFP. But LFP, fundamentally, has much less value in those materials than what the previous chemistries had.

So that’s just an interesting thing to keep in mind. 

Julio Friedmann: My only real thought or contribution here is that years ago we identified battery recycling as an issue. And it takes a couple of years for these kinds of programs to evolve. So I think this is a useful first step. Hopefully they’ll collect data along the way so [00:04:00] that they can learn whether or not they could accelerate or modify the program in a way that represents what’s actual progress and actually able to be done. 

Emma Crow-Willard: Another news piece is that the Biden administration is announcing, they call it “historic investments to build community climate resilience”. A lot of these investments were already a part of the IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but they are announcing directions of where these things can go.

So, one piece is that they’re organizing a White House summit on building climate resilient communities later this year, and as a part of that summit, they’re going to have a new National Climate Resilience framework put together. Also, as part of the IRA, there was about $2.6 billion in resilience funding for NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and, in this week’s announcement, about $575 million of that will go towards a Climate Resilience [00:05:00] Regional Challenge, which is really the first of its kind and it’s geared towards coastal and Great Lakes communities to build resilience. So there’s a lot of money out there for resilience for communities. 

Julio Friedmann: Yeah. This is learning to walk and chew gum at the same time. Like we’ve known we have to do mitigation and we have to do adaptation. Adaptation has generally gotten short shrift. This is a lot of money, much of it from the bipartisan infrastructure law that is aimed at making resilient communities.

And that includes money to tribes. That includes grid upgrades, that includes heat wave response centers, all these sort of things that make sense. Um, and it’s just nice to see this come together in this way. I expect that, as climate change manifests more prominently and we find more of these kinds of shocks, we’ll get better at managing these shocks.

We’ll get better at making resilient systems. This is thus the opening ante. Climate change is ultimately a chronic problem. It’s not an acute problem. It doesn’t happen [00:06:00] once and then it goes away. So you have to manage these things on an ongoing basis, and building resilience is core to that. 

Emma Crow-Willard: Yeah, and as part of this new national Climate Resilience framework, maybe there will be a piece to build, like an inter-agency working group on climate resilience because so far, it seems like it’s kind of siloed within agencies approaching it in different ways and, and that could be a good step forward for US climate resilience. 

Darren Hau: Yeah. I’m not an expert on this, but I think one thing to keep in mind is that, A lot of these things could also just lead to improvements in quality of life, which is something- maybe it’s a way we should market these sorts of initiatives.

One example I’m thinking of is that, like, planting trees and getting access and equity in, you know, accessing green spaces. You know, trees are really important for cooling down environments and creating little microclimates. There’s this really brilliant, uh, Vox, uh, YouTube video talking about how hot Phoenix is and kind of mapping the temperature across the city with where the trees are.

[00:07:00] And also, you know, overlaying that with socioeconomic indicators in the city. And it’s sort of like, wow, like it’s kind of wild to see how correlated all of this is. So there, there’s a lot of just positive quality of life benefits. 

Emma Crow-Willard: That’s such a good point, Darren. I also saw a PBS video about how Phoenix is probably gonna be the most climate-impacted community in the nation and there is funding that goes towards things like more access to green space spaces, et cetera. So-

Darren Hau: Mm-hmm. 

Julio Friedmann: Although this announcement was widely anticipated, it’s still nice to see the United States this week generated more electricity with wind and solar power than with coal. This is not too surprising. Coal plants have been shutting down.

We’ve been building more wind and solar and giving them grid access. Still, we need to clock these milestones for what they are. Uh, we have many, many, many miles to go, but it’s nice to see this outcome.

Emma Crow-Willard: Yeah. Comes down to economics, you know?

Julio Friedmann: It, it [00:08:00] does not just come down to economics. It comes down to economics and a bunch of stuff. We have to build infrastructure. We have to make regulations. We have to develop technology. The economics flow from those other kinds of actions. But at the end of the day, the economics do matter.

Getting the economics right through these kinds of systemic structures and investments is what ultimately yields this kind of an outcome. 

Darren Hau: Yeah, speaking of investing, I, I wonder if any of you have watched Bloomberg’s, uh, Odd Lots podcast? They did an episode recently with Steve Eisman, who- he was famous for, um, being, you know, shown in The Big Short.

One of the things he was saying was a big bet of theirs is betting on companies that will build out US infrastructure. And, of course that seems like, oh, of course. Yeah, of course that has to happen, right? That’s a big gap. But historically, people have shied away from that just because we’re not very good at that in the US.

I guess it’s kind of inspiring that, you know, someone who has that kind of name cachet feels confident enough of that, [00:09:00] that this has to happen, that they’re making a sizable bet in the space. And speaking of that, another interesting media piece out was from the Freakonomics podcast titled, “Are ESG Investors Actually Helping the Environment?”.

Now that’s obviously a fraught, controversial subject that I’m sure people on both sides are gonna get up in arms about, but I thought this was a very nuanced piece, and essentially it was asking “how is ESG done today and what are the actual effects on carbon mitigation?. 

The punchline is that a lot of money managers are using ESG investing to attract more money to be managed by their funds. And the way they say it is, “hey, LPs” or limited partners, the people with the cash, uh, “you should invest in me because I’ll only invest in things that don’t have a large carbon impact”. Uh, the issue that the research has identified is that usually what that means is that these money managers will move money away from like oil and gas companies.

They won’t invest in those [00:10:00] or, you know, and some related fields. And they’ll instead put it into like tech companies, right? Because tech companies have a very low carbon footprint or financial services firms. And what they found was, well, does that really help the environment? Uh, the, the punchline is that no, essentially, you know, you, you’re really, you’re really moving money towards companies that already don’t have a climate footprint, so there’s not much for them to improve.

And by raising the cost of capital for quote unquote “brown dirty firms”, it makes it a lot harder for them to invest in long-term initiatives that could help them find a sustainable business model away from fossil fuels. And when you raise that long-term cost of capital, naturally, they’re incentivized to maximize their short-term returns.

And the best way to incentivize short-term returns is to drill more oil, burn more coal, et cetera. Um, so their question is: what is a better way to do ESG investing? And the example that they have raised is what Engine No. 1 did, I think it was maybe two years ago. They had, like, a [00:11:00] less than 2% stake in Exxon Mobil, but they wrangled a lot of other, um, uh, uh, a lot, a lot of asset managers to back their nominations for the board, really to promote, you know, better governance.

But part of that better governance is figuring out a long term plan, uh, that does touch on sustainability. Julio, you might have more thoughts on this. Would love to hear that.

Julio Friedmann: This is a big, deep, fraught topic, which we will come back to over and over again in this podcast, but this is an interesting story.

This comes down to something we’ve said before: there’s always a good way to do something and a not so good way to do something. ESG, as a topic has come out of nowhere as a way to try to get companies to be more responsive and more responsible to their broader societal mandates, which is entirely smart and fair.

And we found as we started into this, the initial ideas may not have been great, that some of this- the metrics were weak. Or [00:12:00] misaligned the outcomes that we anticipated were jejune, you know, that’s okay. It it, it’s easy to beat up on people in this space, but at its heart, ESG says “we should be doing this better, is there a way to put this in investing?”.

Unsurprisingly, a bunch of money managers, like, fleeced a bunch of people by saying, “I’m doing ESG. Gimme money”. Uh, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. I see this as an opportunity to learn and the kind of findings you’re getting from the Freakonomics story, uh, give some insight on how to do it better.

Uh, hopefully more people will take that up.

Emma Crow-Willard: Yeah. I had a former colleague write a rebuttal to this Freakonomics episode. 

Darren Hau: Wow. I’d love to hear it. 

Emma Crow-Willard: Getting to the point that, like, ESG, at its core, is a risk analysis. 

Darren Hau: Yeah. The risk analysis framework is interesting. I guess the question was, And you know, people, reasonable people can, differ in opinions, but I think the question is, if you’re trying to mitigate carbon and move the world towards a better direction, [00:13:00] is the best way to do it by saying, “hey, I’m only gonna be in, you know, low-carbon-emitting firms and manage my risk”?

Or is it better to try to get the super large, profitable companies that have a massive carbon footprint to shift their long-term operating model? 

Julio Friedmann: Right. The, the bank robber, Willie Sutton said, uh, I rob banks, ’cause that’s where the money is. Ultimately, we need to go where the carbon is if we’re gonna actually get the emissions down.

Speaking of long-term interest rates, I want to spend some time talking about something that’s a live ball, and hopefully we’ll talk more about next week, which is a large finance meeting in Paris. It is organized by Emmanuel Macron, and the subject is basically how to make better financial institutions and structures for developing countries in order to get better climate outcomes.

This is a huge topic and it’s been championed most [00:14:00] authoritatively, uh, and aggressively by Mia Mottley, who’s president of Barbados, and she has been very much forward on this. A lot of her thinking changed after a hurricane in Barbados uh, basically cost them 18% of their GDP. It was a huge hit, and then she’s like, “we can’t keep doing this this way. We’ll never get climate investments this way. We need some new stuff.”

Uh, the IMF and the World Bank were created in 1945 that was kind of in a different world. We should be thinking about how to make them more responsive to the climate moment, more responsive to where countries are, something like 50 countries didn’t exist when the IMF and World Bank, uh, were created, but they exist now and so, This is an attempt to reimagine the financial world in the context of climate crisis and developing nations.

There’s two or three things I wanna just talk to that were stories this week. One of them is the World Bank is expected to [00:15:00] add what are called clause pauses. This is one of these things that once it’s explained, you go, oh, that seems pretty obvious. It basically says if a nation’s been hit by a natural disaster and they have a big investment to pay back, they’re just pausing the investment debt service for two years.

It is literally like, “hey, if you got a 30-year loan, you don’t have to pay the loan for two years now, but you have to pay an extra two years, so it’s now a 32-year loan. That’s really it. But it basically, for a country like Barbados or a country like Nigeria or a Uruguay, like, if they got hit by a natural disaster, they can’t keep paying debt and serve their citizens at the same time. 

So it’s just an opportunity to say, take a breather, get your shoes, great. And that money still gets paid back. Very simple mechanism, straightforward idea, not something we’ve done before. These are the kinds of things that are being put forward at this climate summit in France.

Another big announcement, the International Monetary Fund, [00:16:00] uh, has put together a hundred billion dollars, program for the very poorest countries, and in particular, debt relief for Zambia. Interesting in a world in which we need more cooperation, this is turning out to be an opportunity. And in fact, both Janet Yellen, the US uh, Secretary for the Treasury and her Chinese counterpart shared a stage and said, “we are in, we wanna give money to this fund. We wanna help countries like Zambia with their debt relief. It’s an opportunity for us to collaborate in a new way of doing business that actually builds things”.

So I think this is incredibly exciting. 

Emma Crow-Willard: Okay. 

Julio Friedmann: This all falls under the category of the Bridgetown Initiative, which is something that Prime Minister Mottley has been supporting as a way to reimagine these institutions and the fact that she has a partner in Emmanuel Macron and that all the nations have come together for this discussion is both timely and very, very welcome. 

Emma Crow-Willard: Yeah. Uh, this is always something that’s so fraught at COP right? Funding for developing nations to transition and reduce [00:17:00] emissions and, you know, in Paris, I- wasn’t there like a $300 billion per year commitment from developed countries to help developing nations mitigate and adapt to climate change?

And we haven’t seen that amount reached yet. And a recent, um, Reuters article looked into some of the, some of the claimed funding for climate that was going from developed nations to developing nations and there was, like, funding for coal plants. 

And so there’s all kinds of questions about transparency from, from that fund to begin with. So-

Julio Friedmann: Well, the point of the Bridgetown Initiative and what, uh, prime Minister Mottley and her, uh, uh, environment, I’m sorry, her economics minister, uh, Avinash uh, Persaud have put together is saying, you know, it’s not just about loss and damage funds. It’s not just about grant. [00:18:00] The grants are maybe like, we need $200 or $300 million for the grants, but we- to make the energy transition work, we need trillions and trillions of dollars flowing into the economy.

That’s not a loss and damage fund. That’s reimagining the way we do debt and investment, and that’s what this meeting is about. The main event is how do we get trillions and trillions of dollars of investment into building a completely new world and that is gonna require all kinds of new systems, new structures, new ways of doing business, and this is an important first step towards that outcome.

James Lawler: And now for our interview. In its Climate Action 2030 report, the United States Navy has committed to two broad goals. Number one: build climate resilience, and number two: “reduce climate threat”. I.e. Protect itself from the effects of climate change and minimize its own contribution to the crisis.

These are tall orders for the Navy and they’ve fallen to [00:19:00] Assistant Secretary Meredith Berger, who is currently overseeing the execution of the Navy’s climate plans. A native of South Florida, Meredith is very much aware of the threats posed by rising seas and more powerful storms. Here’s our conversation.

Meredith, it’s wonderful to have you on the Climate Now podcast today. Thank you so much for making time to do this. 

Meredith Berger: Thank you for having me. I’m really looking forward to spending some time with you. 

James Lawler: So I’d love to turn to the Climate Action 2030 report and look more closely at two areas, building climate resilience and reducing the climate threat.

Let’s start with the first one, building climate resilience. What exactly does this mean to the Navy, to build climate resilience?

Meredith Berger: Resilience is a broad term and as we’re looking at it and implementing it has lots of points of impact. So, we’re talking about individual resilience. We have seen indications of how heat, other climate impacts have effect on our training.

More black flag [00:20:00] days. Those are days where it’s too hot to do really intense training and seeing that that changes the way that we are able to operate. There are also studies on the impacts of heat on mental health that we’re paying attention to. It yields an opportunity to look at things like our bases, making sure that we have, um, cooling built in, that we have convening places built in.

But then, more broadly, we were seeing, uh, improvements and updates to things like our uniform facility criteria, which is how we build. We’re basing that on resilience studies that we’ve been doing, doing the same thing with our, uh, electricity, our utilities, ensuring that not only do we have that resilient infrastructure, but should a storm hit, that we have that resilience in terms of security and independence.

And that comes through things like battery storage, um, and other partnerships that allow us to make sure that we are not over-pulling on the grid and also contributing to our own ability [00:21:00] to be able to operate through those disruptions. 

James Lawler: So for those of us who are not familiar with, sort of, how an organization that is like the Navy operates, what does this look like in terms of, you know, just day to day deployment of these initiatives within an organization as complex as the Navy, like, how does this work get done? 

Meredith Berger: So there’s a term I’ll, I’ll borrow from a former CO that was down at Paris Island who talks about the art of the small. And we recognize that there is goodness that comes in making small moves because they add up to being some really big, impactful things. And so at every step of the way, we’re looking to do that.

I’ll offer a brief example. In a, in a recent, uh, big moment of pride for, for everybody across the Department of Defense where Marine Corps logistics space, Albany was the first installation in the entire Department of Defense [00:22:00] that was able to achieve energy net zero. So it means that they were actually giving energy back to the grid they were using less than they were producing.

And I talked about the, the art of the small. This was over the course of more than a decade. Um, the Marines, through sheer grit and determination as as they’re, they’re absolutely known for, went and, through turnovers of commanders (those who are in charge of the base), through people who cycled through at all levels, stood on that commitment to make sure that they could achieve net-zero energy and were able to do it just this summer. At the beginning of the summer in May um, so it’s something that the department’s very committed to and it is, it is an all hands on deck iteration here. 

James Lawler: Mm-hmm. Let’s turn to the other, sort of, theme in the, in the report, which is reducing the climate threat. What does that mean exactly for the Navy? 

Meredith Berger: So the climate threat is one that we look at as a national security [00:23:00] imperative. And that is something that President Biden has stated, that Secretary Austin has stated, that Secretary Del Toro has stated, both he and the commandant identified that climate is a threat to the way that we prepare, train, operate, and execute mission. 

And so when we talk about reducing that threat, it means that we’re reducing the impact that we see to mission. And we’re thinking about that in a few different ways, but logistics is one that I think will, will help see through what, what that threat looks like.

And so if you have someone who is out on a platform and there is a dependency on fuel, there is a dependency on supplies, there’s a dependency on something else to keep you going in that resourcing realm, then it means that you have to stop what you’re doing. You shorten your ability to stay focused on that fight and instead have to go refuel, retool, [00:24:00] re-up on anything else you need. 

But if we have the ability to produce water where we are, to stay on station longer because you don’t need to refuel because something is electrified or the fuel source that we’re using has longer duration, then that means that the, the sailor, the m arine, whoever is focused on that mission, Can stay focused on that fight and not worry about contingencies or dependencies, which means that we operate more securely and that’s ultimately what we trying to do to keep that warfighting advantage. 

James Lawler: Mm-hmm, so I wonder if we could talk about the specific targets that are laid out in the plan, you know, to reduce the climate threat and talk through some of the steps that the navy’s taking to hit those targets. And in particular, if it’s possible to talk about, you know, emissions reduction or energy efficiency, for example.

Meredith Berger: Sure. Absolutely. So a lot of those come out of the recent Executive Order [00:25:00] 4057 that President Biden put out to ensure that we are effectively focused on on drawing down greenhouse gas emissions, making sure that we are using energy efficiently and getting to a place where we’re actually controlling what we’re putting out into the environment to make it, in our case, a better environment in which to operate for a number of reasons.

And so we are focused on those and we’ll achieve them through things like partnerships like the one that I mentioned at Marine Corps Logistics space Albany, partnering with utilities to make sure that we are working in collaboration to, to make sure our energy is efficient in the use, in that we’re reducing our consumption.

Another thing that we’re thinking about is how to use our lands that we are managing in a better way. There’s a lot of opportunity for carbon capture, um, when we have lands, and it, it turns out that the Department of Navy has a significant amount of acreage that we can put towards [00:26:00] this.

Uh, most importantly, all of these actions. Take place in, in the aggregate and they compliment each other. There’s no one line of effort here that’s going to achieve the really bold targets that are out there alone. And so, uh, whether we’re talking about inside, outside the fence line or, or inside, outside the, the borders of the country, there’s all sorts of opportunities to make sure that we’re doing this effectively together.

James Lawler: Mm-hmm, on the point about energy, like decreasing energy use, I wonder have there been any projections of sort of the total amount of energy of, of sort of energy reduction that might be possible? 

Meredith Berger: So this is, this is another one where I’ll, where I’ll offer the art of the small can have a big return. In the near term one, one thing that, that really shows the impact is the example of California. There’s been recent heat waves as have been covered in the news and, um, one of the strains that California [00:27:00] feels is, is on their grid. You have a lot of people who are pulling at the same time for some pretty high, high needs in terms of energy use.

So just mid-August out at a Marine Corps base at Miramar, because they have a, a really robust energy storage system set up there, the base was able to pull themselves off of the community grid and onto their own storage so that more of the San Diego community were able to access a utility without creating strain on the grid.

James Lawler: And you mentioned carbon capture on Navy lands, and I’m curious, um, if there’s any more detail around that that you could share. So, you know, by, I guess by what mechanisms, if any, does the Navy capture carbon today? And if that’s not happening today, are there any plans to, to do so in the future? 

Meredith Berger: Sure. So in our strategy, we committed to draw down an additional 5 million metric [00:28:00] tons of CO2 per year through the nature-based solutions that are available. And that’s through 2027. So right now we’re looking at how to manage our lands and make sure that we, um, identify where we can do that. And then, as we keep moving forward and deploying these capabilities through 27, be able to achieve that goal.

So we’re at the front end of it, certainly, um, but it is a near-term goal and that’s part of what we working implementation. So in about a month, much more detail to follow in terms of what those discrete steps will be. 

James Lawler: Mm-hmm. So the report also discusses the need for the Navy to build two types of resiliency in conjunction with climate change resiliency.

And one of the first is nature-based resiliency and the other is energy resiliency. And I wonder if you could walk us through what those two types of resiliency are. 

Meredith Berger: Sure. So nature-based resiliency [00:29:00] is being able to use the, the infrastructure that, that naturally exists on coastlines and throughout the environment in which we operate to be resilient against some threats.

One of the first ones that I understood well were, were mangroves against the coastlines. They protect against hurricanes and, and strengthen against beach erosion and other impacts that come when a storm first hits land. And so, as we find those opportunities, it helps to avoid things like what we saw with Hurricane Florence when it came and, and hit the Marine Corps’s base at Lejeune there.

That was where they lost the beach on which they trained, the buildings in which they did their work, and were displaced and, and still, in some cases, continued to be displaced because of the impacts of the storm to the tune of several billion dollars of repairs that needed to happen. 

And so when we have something naturally [00:30:00] built in that we can either count on or reinforce, that is something that we are certainly looking to, to use. When we talk about energy resilience, this is the ability to ensure that our missions are complete, so that is the ability to operate independently.

If, for example, a storm comes through, instead of being out of power and unable to access important things from training to materials to anything else that it takes to keep a base running and, and on-focus and on-mission, instead, resilience kicks in and with the energy independence we’re able to keep operating because of stored energy, because of that ability to immediately be able to go to what we’ve already built in to protect ourselves. And so that is, um, security, that mission assurance.

And that is another one of our definitions of resilience. 

James Lawler: Got it. Now, I’m very interested to hear you reflect on the role of [00:31:00] Navy in driving the market more broadly. And there were- in the report, there are references to hybridization and electrification of, of ground vehicles used in combat, for example. And I’m wondering how this could push manufacturers and the mar- and the consumer market in general to adopt electric vehicles.

And I’m sorry, that’s my dog in the background. I’m mute while you answer. 

Meredith Berger: Um, this is, this is a place where we can signal what the need is and it allows all of, of industry to collaborate to offer different perspectives to offer what is in the realm of the possible or figure out how to get to what we need to be possible when it comes to development.

An immediate example is electric vehicles. So we, we saw that there has been a signal that we are transitioning to electric vehicles and we are seeing companies start to produce. And this is everything from non-tactical [00:32:00] to tactical vehicles, which allows us to figure out if that’s going to work in the environments that we need them to work in.

Batteries are another place where we need to come up with, uh, variety. And we need to come up with places that we can store, where we can make sure that we continue to create longevity in the way that we are storing, and ways that are, that are better for the environment in terms of being able to access some of the rare earth, the minerals that support battery development, but also create diversity in what our supply chain looks like, so that we can, again, stay resilient as we execute mission and continue to, to face challenges there. 

James Lawler: Mm-hmm. And I, I’d love to come back to the story you mentioned earlier about the Albany base, now officially a net-zero base, and I’m, I’m, I’m wondering if you might be able to talk through any more detail there about the specific things that that base did from an, you know, energy [00:33:00] infrastructure, you know, carbon standpoint to achieve that result. 

Meredith Berger: Sure. So this was really a range of solutions. There were a few different partnerships with local utilities, some of the municipality partners there as well that all came together to have one end. So I’ll, I’ll just list a couple for you.

Um. So there was thermal energy storage that came into play. So in advanced heat pump system, they made little investments like investing in the lighting. So LED lighting, of course, is much more energy efficient. It’s much more, as a result, cost efficient and effective. Also leads to a culture- we spoke about consumption earlier, making sure that there is a shift in that mindset of, of how to use energy, that we are trying to reduce consumption.

There are partnerships with PG&E out [00:34:00] there, um, for woody biomass to be able to use the steam to be able to power, uh, some of the electricity needs and, and create energy that could be stored there. All of this, in large part, was funded through partnerships, through third-party financing and some really innovative energy support contracts that allowed us to take funding to support near-term objectives and create some opportunities for wins. 

And then, actually from the savings that we accrued from the energy, be able to pay back some of the financing on those so that there was just a win at every single step of the way. And it was things like that that came together in the aggregate that got them to net-zero energy base certification. But it, it took a lot of steps and a lot of different partnerships and, and parts and pieces that put together the whole.

James Lawler: Mm-hmm. That’s, that’s fascinating. I- is that something that the, you know, the Navy would look to [00:35:00] operationalize like the, like the deployment of net-zero strategies across all bases given the success of this, of this one base? Is that a move that then would be kind of, I guess uh, uh, more aggressively advanced elsewhere given, given what you were able to achieve in that case? 

Meredith Berger: Absolutely, yes. Wholehearted yes. And I will say, while this was the first net-zero energy base in the Department of Defense, then- there’s, there’s gonna be a lot more in the Department of the Navy.

So you’re gonna see more Marine Corps bases, more Navy installations that do just this because we know that it is smart for mission, it’s smart for community, it’s smart for the climate objectives that we have. 

James Lawler: So I wonder if, and correct me if I’m off base here, Meredith, but is it, is there, is there a lesson in how this space was able to become net zero for other large, you know, large footprint organizations, you know, commer-, [00:36:00] even like in the commercial private sector, for example? Is there a model there that- let’s say you’re a, you’re a big industrial company, or you are a university campus, or you’re, you’re, you’re some other complex footprint. Are there lessons that are to be- that could be taken from the success story that this base had?

Meredith Berger: Yes. I, I would offer, there’s two parts to that. One is partnerships are important, and the second is that you should know, understand, and maximize your resources. So this was a place where, in Georgia, the Marine Corps there took a look and said, “here are the resources, here’s how we can maximize the benefits”.

And went to partners and said to the partners, “here’s what we’ve got. How can we work with you? Do you have wind? Do you have solar? Do you have the ability to store? Do you have the place to [00:37:00] build the infrastructure to store? Who are your partners? How can you work with your utility partners? How can you work with the community, with municipalities?”

Because at the end of the day, none of these threats stop at a fence line, um, at a border or anywhere else. And so by understanding your resources, maximizing what you have and working with partners to make sure that you make them do even more, I think that this is something everybody could, could find some utility in.

James Lawler: It sounds like it. It’s really, really interesting. Well, Meredith, my last question for you is: how does it feel to be in your position at the Navy, this huge, huge department, huge organization, at a time of such massive transition in this country?

And when it comes to, you know, the priorities around energy and emissions reduction, et cetera, what is that- what is that like? 

Meredith Berger: Well, there is nowhere I would rather be. There [00:38:00] is such a tremendous opportunity to make sure that we are being impactful in a space and on an issue and in an environment where this is a threat. And so when I think about what I am supposed to do when I come to work every day at the Department of Navy for the sailors, for the Marines, for the civilians that work in this department, I am supposed to make sure that they have everything that they need to be able to do their jobs. 

Climate is a threat to their ability to be able to do that and so, at every chance I get, what I’m doing every day and every opportunity I take is to make sure that we are reducing that threat to make sure that when the nation calls on the people of the department, they are set to go with every advantage, every tool that they need, and every opportunity to execute mission.

James Lawler: Excellent. Well, thank, thank you, Meredith. Thank you so much again for your time. I [00:39:00] know you’re very busy and I really appreciate you making time for this. 

Meredith Berger: Likewise, very, very grateful for the time to spend with you and for paying attention to it. This is- it’s a connection that people don’t often make between climate and mission and the military, but for the military, it really is making sure that we are doing our duty according to what we have to, for national security and for protecting and defending the nation.

James Lawler: That was Meredith Berger, assistant secretary of the Navy for energy installations and environment. That’s it for this episode of the podcast. To learn more about the US government’s long-term climate action plans, check out our videos and other podcast conversations at climatenow.com. And if you’d like to get in touch, email us at contact@climatenow.com or tweet us at weareclimatenow.

We hope you’ll join us for our next conversation.