Climate Change: Army Sets Environmental Resilience Goals.

• Author: Luckenbaugh, Josh

With Hurricane Ian bearing down on Florida, residents faced a choice: evacuate or risk riding out what was one of the most powerful storms to hit the state. Among the residents deciding what to do were U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command, based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

On Sept. 26, the base ordered all non-mission essential personnel to evacuate.

While MacDill avoided significant damage according to initial reports, one only has to look at another Florida installation, Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, to see the threat catastrophic weather events pose to military installations and operations. Tyndall took a direct hit from Hurricane Michael in 2018, rendering 484 buildings destroyed or damaged beyond repair.

In January 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order stating that "climate considerations shall be an essential element of United States foreign policy and national security."

Within the Defense Department, the Army has led efforts to address climate concerns. It became the first service to release a climate strategy this past February and then an implementation plan in October.

The Army's climate strategy outlined long-term goals and the service's three primary lines of effort--installations, training and acquisition and logistics--while the implementation plan laid out specific climate objectives through fiscal year 2027.

If the climate strategy is the "what" regarding the Army's response to climate change, the implementation plan is the "how," said Paul Farnan, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment.

"We're setting the foundation for the long-term goals," Farnan said during the plan's launch event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"What do we need to do now to make sure that the Army and DoD [are] moving in the right direction to accomplish these long-term goals, but at the same time it's also actually moving us toward those goals?" he said. "So, there's some very real accomplishments that are going to be set forward over the next five years."

As for installations, the Army is looking to make significant reductions in its carbon footprint and increase renewable energy generation. In the original climate strategy, the service set a goal to "attain net-zero [greenhouse gas] emissions from Army installations by 2045."

"We're focused on delivering energy assurance for critical missions using carbon-free energy...