NATO Moves to Tackle Military Greenhouse Gas Emissions Even While Girding Against Russia

As war rages in Ukraine, leaders of the world’s largest military alliance convened in Madrid on Tuesday for what NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he envisions as a “transformative” summit, aimed at making the pact “even stronger and more agile.”

On the agenda of the three-day meeting: Integrating climate change into NATO’s statement of purpose for the first time, and setting out a roadmap for how the heavily fossil fuel-reliant militaries in the alliance can reduce their massive greenhouse gas footprints.

NATO announced its climate plan a year ago, and some observers thought it might be pushed aside at the Madrid summit by the urgency of how to support Ukraine in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression. But the war—fueled by Russia’s oil and gas revenue and with global impacts on food supply and economies—appears to have created new motivation within the alliance to address the security risks of both climate change and fossil-fuel dependence.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine underscores the urgency of acting today to reduce Putin’s weaponization of fossil energy on the West,” said Sherri Goodman, who served as U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense during the Clinton administration. 

Goodman made the remarks when the International Military Council on Climate and Security, which she heads, published a roadmap for decarbonizing defense to prepare for the NATO summit.

“While some say that the war and the provision of military aid to Ukraine makes it harder to decarbonize defense, in fact, the opposite is true,” said Goodman. “Russia’s invasion, along with the associated global energy and food insecurity it has generated, means we need to accelerate the energy transition and enable militaries to lead by example.”

Dependence on fossil fuels has proven to be a battlefield liability as well, with Russia’s advance stalled partly by fuel shortages and thousands of U,S. In the attacks on fuel resupply and fuel shortages, soldiers were killed and wounded in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

It is difficult to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from armed forces. Military strength has been defined as the ability to deploy tanks, jets, and other equipment that burn large amounts of fuel.

NATO is expected adopt emission reduction targets for its headquarters, which includes 4,000 personnel, in Brussels, and command centers all around the world. Each of the 30 member countries will decide what goals they will set for decarbonization. Some are more prepared than others to take such steps, and all are aware that potential foes—particularly Russia and China— have no plans to reduce their military reliance on petroleum.

One of the greatest challenges is that few countries know the baseline for their military’s greenhouse gas emissions well enough to set goals to reduce them. Even those countries that do report their military greenhouse gas emissions, such the United States or Canada, don’t count carbon pollution caused by private sector suppliers. They also don’t capture the most significant greenhouse gas emissions of their activities, those that occur with the destruction of war. 

A group of academics who study the environmental impact of armed force have been pushing for countries to better understand the impact of militaries on greenhouse gas emissions. They argue that the world cannot achieve the Paris agreement’s decarbonization goals without energy transformation in defense operations.

“Nobody is suggesting that we constrain military operations through carbon budgets,” said Doug Weir, research and policy director of the United Kingdom-based nonprofit Conflict and Environment Observatory, which just released a proposed framework for military emissions reporting. “But it’s more a case that militaries are so fundamentally locked into fossil fuels—and high-consuming fossil fuels—that there’s just not really been much of a pressure on them until recently to actually improve the energy efficiency of their platforms.”

He added, “There’s got to be decades of progress in actually decarbonizing the military and reducing their consumption and dependency, and given the long lifetime of most military equipment, these are conversations that need to start.”

The Defense Department Has ‘No Choice’ But to Focus on Climate

The increased attention NATO nations now give to climate changes is a marked change from 25 years back, when the United States lobbied hard for a Kyoto protocol that would include a national security exempt that would allow nations to be free from any obligation to limit their greenhouse gas emissions during military operations. 

“We are concerned that emissions limitations, if not properly addressed, could prevent rapid decisions about training and employing multilateral peacekeeping and peace enforcing forces,” said a 1997 State Department memorandum on the U.S. position, recently released in response to an open records request by the nonprofit National Security Archive. 

Although the United States did not ratify the Kyoto protocol, the national security exemption that it received has had a lasting impact on military carbon emissions, according to academics who have studied them. It was voluntary for industrialized countries to report their annual greenhouse gases emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Some countries provide estimates while others report no military emissions at all.

Under a policy that President Barack Obama established for all federal agencies, the U.S. Department of Defense has been reporting its greenhouse gases from fuel use and electricity since 2010. Even under President Donald Trump, who sought to aggressively roll back government climate policy, agencies continued to track carbon emissions; the Defense Department recently produced a Congressionally-mandated report compiling its emissions data for the past decade.

Since 2010, DOD emissions have dropped 40%, reflecting the decline in troop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the military’s carbon footprint is still as large as that of a small country, at nearly 52 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in fiscal year 2020, accounting for 75 percent of U.S. government greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. A study by Neta Crawford of Oxford University, who has a book coming out this fall on the Pentagon and climate change, showed that from 2001 to 2017, the U.S. military emitted more than 440 million metric tons of greenhouse gases directly related to war-related fuel consumption—the equivalent of adding nearly 95 million passenger vehicles to the road for a year.

That’s why there was initially an outcry from climate activists and Democratic members of Congress in December over President Joe Biden’s executive order seeking large cuts in greenhouse gas emissions across the federal government. The order included a provision allowing agencies to seek a national security exemption, offering a loophole for the government’s largest carbon polluter.

But Defense Department officials said they don’t plan to seek a national security exemption and are committed to the objectives in Biden’s executive order, which include reaching 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2030, and charting a path to net zero emissions by 2050. In a speech this spring, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said that the department would be making “energy supportability and demand reduction” a priority in upgrades to current programs or the development of new capabilities.

Each branch of the armed force is releasing detailed plans for reducing carbon emissions. This began with the Army in February, and continued with the Navy in May. For example, the Army plans to make all its light-duty, non-tactical vehicles electric by 2027 and to have a microgrid installed on every installation by 2035. The Navy plans to use nature-based solutions to reduce shoreline erosion and protect its coastal mission-critical facilities. It also has a goal to divert at least half its non-hazardous solid refuse from landfills by 2025. 

“The Department of Defense has focused on climate at this time because we have no choice,” said Richard Kidd, deputy assistant defense secretary for environment and energy resilience, in an interview. “Climate change is the context in which all of us are going to live our lives and perform our jobs. And for the Department of Defense, we will look at both climate adaptation, which is managing the unavoidable, and climate mitigation, which is avoiding the unmanageable.”

While the United States, which is the largest NATO member, is developing a new strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for its military, NATO is attempting to intensify its climate change policy. Clean energy is not an entirely new subject for the alliance; NATO adopted a “Green Defence” framework in 2014, pledging to significantly increase the energy efficiency of its forces. However, the Trump administration made it clear that NATO would not be addressing climate change. The Trump administration also questioned the science behind climate change and the purpose of the 70 year-old collective defense alliance between the United States, Canada, Europe.

But last year, at the first NATO summit attended by Biden, the alliance issued a Climate Change and Security Action Plan declaring climate change “one of the defining challenges of our times.” Stoltenberg, the former prime minister of Norway who once served as United Nations special envoy for climate change, became the first NATO secretary general to attend international climate talks last fall. At a side event in Glasgow, he said that climate change “is now at the heart of NATO’s agenda.”

At the Madrid summit, many of the initiatives NATO had announced in 2021 will be realized. Substantial language on climate change will be included in NATO’s new “Strategic Concept” document, the first update in the alliance’s statement of purpose in a dozen years. NATO will also release a security analysis of climate change and measures to adapt NATO forces to it. This will include preparing forces to provide more disaster relief, preparing them for extreme temperatures, and responding appropriately to the changing Arctic due to melting sea-ice.

NATO will announce targets for greenhouse gas reduction for NATO for 2030. The goal is to achieve net-zero emission by 2050. NATO will also release a long-awaited analysis tool that allies can use in order to account for greenhouse gas emissions from military installations and activities. NATO, however, does not have its own army and is not setting any goals for its member countries’ militaries. These are the ones that generate the majority of the greenhouse gases associated with NATO operations. As an intergovernmental body, NATO’s view is that it has no power to enforce such measures, which are under the purview of national governments. And in any case, such an approach would be a political non-starter as NATO members focus on the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

“It is one thing to seek reductions for your routine activities and bases at home,” said James Appathurai, NATO’s deputy assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges. “It is a very different thing to seek reductions for deployed forces and in exercises when the security environment is getting worse.”

Not just climate: Fossil fuel dependence is a battleground lability

Already, it’s clear that the Russia-Ukraine conflict will make it difficult to decarbonize NATO armed force to some degree. Germany has promised to spend 100 billion euros (about $105 million) to modernize their armed forces. This is nearly three times its spending last year. The money will go towards the purchase of heavy transport helicopters and fighter jets as well as armored vehicles. These are all huge consumers of fuel.

Military strategists are also aware of the dangers of dependence on petroleum fuel on the field. Fuel shortages were a major factor in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the United States’ fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, 3,000 U.S. soldiers were killed or wounded in attacks on fuel and water resupplies between 2003 and 2007, about one casualty for every 24 fuel convoys. The United States attempted to avoid convoys during the troop surge of 2011, parachuting fuel barrels to remote bases at a reported cost as high as $400 per gallon.

Kidd said that the U.S. found it was possible to reduce the number fuel convoys using experimental solar microgrids. These microgrids are used to provide electricity at remote bases, which would otherwise have been dependent on diesel generators. He stated that the military sees large-scale battery storage, microgrids, and solar panels, as investments into cleaner energy that make bases more resilient and align with its defense mission.

Tactical aircraft and aircraft face a more difficult challenge. Although the Navy has had some success with biofuels as a drop in replacement for jet fuel, it is still difficult to obtain enough supply at an affordable cost. The Department of Defense finances startup companies to produce military-grade fuels from algae and agricultural/woody waste material like crop stalks and food scraps. 

The Army is also studying electrification kits to add to tactical vehicles. This could reduce fuel consumption by 25%. Currently, Army tanks and other tactical vehicles must continuously run their engines to power auxiliary systems like communications, even when the vehicles aren’t moving. The vehicles will be able to run without the need for idling by using electrification kits.

Yet there is recognition throughout the military establishment that the technology currently doesn’t exist to deploy tactical troops and weapons without fossil fuel. In addition to the research and development that the U.S. military is doing, NATO is establishing a multinational Innovation Fund, the world’s first multi-sovereign venture capital fund. Its purpose will be to invest 1,000,000 euros in early-stage technology and startups that are aligned with its strategic goals, including addressing climate change.

As Society Weans from Fossil Fuels the Military Must Follow suit

All those who have studied the problem, both inside and outside of the military establishment, agree that there are no easy solutions. Some believe that cutting military spending is the only way of significantly reducing carbon pollution.

“We need a recognition of the challenges ahead, and that it might not necessarily all be answered by switching technologies,” said Linsey Cottrell, environmental policy coordinator at the Conflict and Environment Observatory. “There have to be some military strategy decisions as well, decisions on deployment and capacity building. As expected military expenditures increase, obviously there’s this risk that there are just going to be increases in greenhouse gas emissions as well.”

NATO nations are attempting to increase their military spending while simultaneously trying to figure out how they can field fighting forces without the use of fossil fuels.

“If our whole society is moving away from fossil fuels in let’s say, 20 to 30 years, the infrastructure for fossil fuels will also diminish,” said David van Weel, NATO assistant secretary general for emerging security challenges.

He added, “If the military are then the only ones using fossil fuels, then we will need to do our own exploration, our own refineries, our own logistics of the whole of the fuel chain, and that can not be reality.”

And since the systems that armed forces are procuring over the next 10 years are meant to last for 30 years, he said, “We need to think about innovative solutions to move away from fossil fuels now.”